Tattoo too much?

Would you tattoo your face? I’m not talking about a just-released-from-Wormwood-Scrubs teardrop, but drawn-on eyebrows, glossy black eyeliner or even subtle lip colour — the semi-permanent tattoos that are proving to be increasingly popular for the time-poor among us.

Dominique Bossavy, a specialist in the art of permanent make-up whose clients include Michelle Williams and Lena Dunham, says that the surge in demand is partly down to new tools. “Back in the 1980s, the technique involved very powerful tattoo guns and tattoo ink which was too strong for the skin on the face.” Now finer needles are used, and the tattoo guns have been honed so it’s harder to make mistakes.

Based in Los Angeles, with clinics in New York and Paris, Bossavy is skilled in all sorts of innovative treatments. She’s an expert in nipple tattoos for women who have undergone breast reconstruction, and a pioneer of eyebrow microblading, where little nicks are made with a blade to your pre-numbed brows, after which tattoo ink is applied with feather-like strokes. The newest addition to her roster is a lip “blushing” treatment, where the lips are given a natural-looking colour that lasts for one to two years.

But do we really need this sort of invasive procedure to look beautiful? Bossavy thinks it’s particularly effective as we mature. Take lip blushing. “As we age, the lessening of blood supply to the lips combined with factors such as stress, smoking and sun damage contributes to our natural vermilion colour fading,” she says. “The cupid’s bow disappears, and the skin border directly around the lips loses its elastin and collagen. It’s why we find ourselves reaching for lipstick and lip gloss more.”

An added bonus of the treatment she offers is that the needling helps to boost collagen naturally, making the lips look instantly fuller. What’s more, the treatment can be tailored to suit any ethnicity: Bossavy uses at least two or three different shades for the lips, and applies them strategically over two sessions. She’s not cheap, though — expect to pay about $3,500 and up — and be prepared for some degree of discomfort, depending on your tolerance for pain.

Treatments like these may seem alarming at first but weighed up, they make sense. If you spend five minutes every morning rooting around in your handbag to find that elusive lipstick or eyebrow pencil, and another five removing your make-up at night, that’s a lot of time wasted over a lifetime. Microblading your brows takes a couple of hours max and lasts for up to 18 months. What’s not to like?

“It’s popular because it’s a natural-looking treatment that can cater to everyone’s needs, whatever the desired colour or shape,” says Jenni Draper, who had an 18-year career as a beauty therapist before branching out into microblading brows two years ago. “For people who have fine brow hair, or who have lost their brows after chemotherapy, you can create something very natural, but for younger women who want a more pronounced shape, you can add to it bit by bit.” Unlike traditional tattoos, the microblade only penetrates the outer layer of the skin, so as your skin naturally exfoliates over time, the colour disappears.

The newest treatment is lip ‘blushing’ — a natural-looking colour that lasts for one to two years

The important bit with both lip and brow procedures is that you find a skilled and experienced practitioner, and take your time over the consultation. Bossavy, who has specialised in semi-permanent make-up for almost 30 years, advises against certain procedures, such as under-eye concealer tattoos. “I’ve seen so many total disasters, with uneven white-grey pigment looking like milia [small white bumps] or blotchy concealer.”

Obviously too much of a scaredy-cat to try anything myself, I volunteered my sister as a guinea pig for micro­bladed brows, because hers never properly grew back after her cancer treatment. Draper offers a reduced fee of £250 to anyone who’s been through chemotherapy; otherwise, she charges £375.

Like all good beauty therapists, Draper insists on a patch test first (google #microbladingfail and you’ll see why you really don’t want to proceed without checking whether you are allergic to the dye), and recommends an over-the-counter anaesthetic cream to minimise the pain. Before the blading part starts, lines are drawn across and around the brow using cotton threads and a stick-on ruler as a guide. Once Draper gets going with the blade, which is a little wider than a needle, you can expect to feel little sharp pricks.

As with everything, sometimes what you want isn’t necessarily what you need. The elongated brows that stretch the full length of the eye — the shape we tend to think of as classic — were deemed an unnatural fit for my sister’s face shape. Instead, she got brows just like the ones she’d had before chemotherapy, so natural that the first time I saw her afterwards, it took me a while to notice she’d had anything done at all. And that, ultimately, is the true test of a good facial tattoo.

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