Author: Gemma Suter

Posted on by — 1 Comment

An Interview with Elizabeth Moore – Piercer

I first met Elizabeth around ten years ago when we both worked in a call centre . We bonded immediately over our shared love of piercings, tattoos and all things alternative. Throughout the years, Elizabeth has navigated the turbulent path of ADHD and ASD whilst immersing themselves fully into an industry that they are now thriving in. When we first met, Elizabeth struggled to talk with strangers and now they’re hosting talks at both the UKAPP and Piercer Trade Show events, speaking to rooms full of piercers about Apprenticeships in the UK and Neurodivergence in Piercing! On a personal note, Elizabeth was the first person to encourage me to start piercing and I am eternally and whole-heartadly grateful that they gave me that push and overwhelmingly proud of the person and piercer that they are.
Elizabeth works at Body Alter, Worksop

Gemma: How did you get started in piercing?

Elizabeth: I was being pierced a lot as a teenager, then I got normal jobs because I thought that was what you were supposed to do. I started getting pierced again in my early 20s but I’d never been pierced by anyone who wasn’t a tattooist so I never made the connection that it was a job.

Then I saw somewhere advertising for a body piercer and I didn’t get the job there but it was the first time I was like, ‘oh, this is someone’s job and I could do that?!’ I very much hated corporate life. This was maybe 2016 and it all kind of unfolded from there. When clients ask, I tell them I got started by accident.

G: What started your interest in piercing?

E: I was on MySpace for most of my teen years. There were all these ‘scene queens’, with snake bites and septum piercings, and I was like, shit, I want all of those. Then it all kind of went a bit nuts from there. 

G: We’ve been friends a long time, I know your piercing career and your journey with mental health and getting your diagnosis sort of began simultaneously right? 

E: So I have Autism Spectrum Disorder, ADHD, dyspraxia and depression. I’d been diagnosed in maybe 2014/15. I’d given up work because of what I thought was a mental health crisis and happened to see a GP who was actually understanding. I was like, basically I just need you to give me drugs to get me through this crisis, and then I’ll look for a job again. And she asked if I’d ever considered that I might be autistic. She put that in motion and I saw a mental health nurse, then an autism specialist at a place in Chesterfield. The specialist thought I had ADHD and I laughed at her and said no, that’s not what it is. I’ve been reading about autism and it’s definitely that. 

I had an informal diagnosis from the GP initially, but then it took a long time to see a specialist who confirmed what I had already accepted by that point.

Fred the little terror

G: You’re very open about your experience being neurodivergent both as a person and a piercer.

E:  I’m just not ashamed of it. My diagnosis explained a lot about myself and it feels like a big part of who I am. I think it’s a lot of the reason why I’m good at what I do. It’s the reason why I’m not scared to have an opinion.

I have opinions on everything and I think anyone who’s ever talked to me on the internet very much knows. But that’s because I know myself well now, and I think knowing myself well came from a diagnosis. People are often a little frightened to seek it out. It doesn’t really change your life that dramatically if you know, but it’s a nice bit of validation. I don’t think it’s anything to be ashamed of. I don’t think there’s any condition that you should be ashamed of but I understand people want to keep things private. 

G:  You were diagnosed and then immediately started in the industry under not the most ideal circumstances, how was that for you?

E: I was newly diagnosed, I’d been masking for most of my life anyway so I’d not quite learned how to drop that completely in a way that I feel like I can do now. I was still very much in that headspace where I’d worked in call centers and a corporate world where I felt like I had no choice but to pretend to be a functional human being. 

Masking is exhausting. So it was really hard at the beginning to do it and learn not only how to pierce but also how to interact with people in a customer service setting. Piercing is a customer service industry that happens to have treatments attached to it. But then I also had to learn how not to get too invested.

We talk about imposter syndrome a lot on the internet. People talk about having it a lot and that’s especially true when you’re a neurodivergent person. These people are never gonna forget anything. Every mistake or every weird thing I’ve done in my career, I can remember, I can very much call back to that, but I’ll never remember the good stuff.

That was really hard to balance at first, and now I just dump it all on Paddy and make him deal with the things I’m stressing about

G: Have you found within the industry, there is quite a sub-community of neurodivergent piercers?

E: Yeah, privately a lot of people have reached out and said they’re either neurodiverse and are struggling with it, or they think they might be. But also I just polled the UK Professionals group just to see and yeah, loads of people have various personality disorders,

I think what draws us to this industry is that it’s not necessarily needing to mask all the time. There’s not very many people where I feel like I know they’re not hiding their intentions, but that is true of someone that is neurodivergent. Generally, I know that they’re not hiding their actual intentions because it’s not always something that we can do. Like lying is difficult. Building emotions is difficult, so then you kind of have to be yourself around them. And I think like calls to like in any part of your life. I think neurodiverse people are drawn to each other just because they’re neurodiverse and everyone tends to have a bit of a sense of that in someone else.

Lobe piercing by Elizabeth using the “LA baby” by @buddhajewelryofficial

G: What advice would you give piercers who are struggling with their own mental health/neurodivergence but also who have clients that are?

 E: From a piercer perspective, be kind to yourself and patient with yourself. Understand your own boundaries and recognise what burnout is for you because burnout is not the same for everyone. Give yourself longer appointments. Do whatever it is that makes your life easier.

There’s zero point struggling, particularly when you are in an industry or a job that you have so much control over. I appreciate that not everybody has as much control but particularly if people are diagnosed, autism and ADHD are recognised as disabilities in this country and your employer has a legal obligation to make reasonable adjustments. But you have to know what those reasonable adjustments are. You kinda have to take some ownership of it or advocate someone to speak for you that understands.

My huge, big, giant thing from a client perspective,for anyone who is piercing someone who is neurodiverse, is don’t patronise them. I see so much performative activism on the internet that’s like, ‘oh, we do this thing for our autistic clients.’ It just feels really weird. ‘I’m gonna put lots of different cloud lights in here’. Fuck no. Everyone’s sensory issues are different as well. You’ve just gotta listen to your client. As a client, I just wanna be treated as a person and just be pierced the way that you pierce everyone because I can tell if you are out of your comfort zone as well. I see heaps of people really infantalise people with neurodiversity issues.

I like it when people give the option to have a silent appointment, but again, don’t just assume that your autistic client might want you not to talk to them because my ADHD wants you to chat.

As a piercer, I will try and make those accommodations, but also I can’t make any promises. There’s not always gonna be an option where I can do that either but I’ll try my best. We don’t do small talk in my piercing room. We do big talk. Always big talk. What superpowers would you have? I don’t know how to do small talk. 

G: What’s the weirdest superpower someone has said?

E:  People tend to just go for the power of flight or invisibility. Some guy wanted to make money with his hands and we ended up talking about economics for like 25 minutes. I always wanna ask people what they’re reading, but then not everybody reads

Another good one that I ask people is, what’s the weirdest fact they know. That’s fun because they are always excited to tell you. Did you know an octopus’s mouth was also its anus? It’s true for squid as well. 

G: You’ve been doing some work around piercing apprenticeships in the UK. Can you tell us a bit about that and why you started the UK Piercing Apprentices Facebook group?

E: I wanted there to be piercing specific information for people who were looking to start an apprenticeship either as an apprentice or as a mentor. It’s not a particularly active group, but I think there comes a point where it doesn’t really need to be. I wanted it to be a live-in resource.

I get asked all the time if I’m taking on a trainee and there was nowhere to point people for UK specific information about what a piercing traineeship is. There’s a couple of really good blogs but a lot of them are American so the information wasn’t always relevant to the UK and /UK legislation.  

Also it’s a group where people could ask questions in real time. There’s experienced piercers there, there’s piercers who are learning and there’s people who want to be piercers in there. Before I started the group, all the Facebook groups were for professionals only so we’re in these little echo chambers where we’re saying the best way to learn to be a piercer is to do an apprenticeship and learn from another piercer, but we’re also saying it to each other. That information wasn’t getting any further really. Piercers were also saying, you should find a piercer that you like and hang out at their studio, which was creating a huge issue for me personally. I can’t deal with that so I was having to say no to clients wanting to hang out and I came out of that looking like the bad guy even though I had done nothing wrong.

Performing a tandem piercing with Nathan at The Piercer Trade Show,

G: Unfortunately, the piercing and tattoo industry has a bad history of apprentice abuse. People would take on apprentices who were maybe naive or vulnerable, not pay them for their work and expect them to just be grateful that they’re a part of the industry. 

E: People didn’t know that they were being exploited either and that was the big thing for me. People were being treated appallingly, but they were just being told to expect that because ‘that’s how it’s done, that’s how you learn.’ And it just felt super weird because these people are often women, people of color, disabled people, people who are already vulnerable and who would then be further exploited just for the chance to do something that they enjoyed. I think there’s real ego rooted in it as well, the mentality that a mentors knowledge is enough payment, That won’t pay your bills.

Piercing is a cool job, it’s a fun job and I find myself incredibly lucky that I get to do it every day, but the reality is it’s just not that important. So to abuse someone and treat them poorly, to do that job is bizarre to me. I worked in a McDonald’s and they paid me from day one, even when I didn’t know how to make a Big Mac. Why would it not be the same for piercing training? 

We have got away with whatever we’ve wanted as an industry for far too long, and if we don’t sort this apprenticeship thing out as an industry and teach people what they’re entitled to and what they deserve and what they’re legally obliged to have, the government will do it for us.

G: Under UK legislation in 2023, what should a piercing apprenticeship look like?

E: They should be an employed member of staff who’s being referred to as a trainee or a junior member of staff. But they’re not apprentices because they’re not going to college and they will not receive a qualification at the end of it. We’re not an accredited industry. They should be paid at least minimum wage, not an apprenticeship wage. In the UK, an apprenticeship is a lower paid position because you are learning from an accredited source, usually a college, and you receive a qualification at the end of it.

Hairdressers are a really good example of that. It’s gonna be somebody who’s going to college however many days a week, every week, and then they’re going to work in a salon on other days. That salon is being funded to pay for their apprentice, and their apprentice will be on three or four pounds an hour.

Not to scare everyone off, but if piercing apprenticeship went the same route and we were qualified the same way, it would mean anyone with a teaching degree could teach piercing. My mom has a teaching degree and she was a hairdresser. She refers to labret piercings as chin piercings.

I love Elizabeth’s mom but we don’t need her teaching people how to do chin piercings. Hi Megan! <3

G: So you did a roundtable at the UKAPP conference on apprenticeships and also a class at the Piercer Trade Show, can you tell us what that was like?

E: I kind of wanted to cover both aspects of it. At the Trade Show in Ireland, there was a good mixture of piercers and apprentices already there. For  piercers looking to take on an apprentice, I wanted them to know where they could find that information and to make sure that they’re operating within the laws. 

In my talks, I try to encourage people to rethink their standpoint on if they actually need an apprentice. Do they actually need a cleaner or maybe a studio manager? Maybe you actually need a cleaner to focus solely on that task. Or if you’re struggling to pierce and run your reception, do you need a receptionist? Because your front of house is actually probably more valuable to your business than any other member of staff because they’re seeing your customers first.

I do talk about Rogue a lot in this because I think you’ve got a really good balance of who does what. Instead of people who take on an apprentice to be a general dog’s body.  I think it was Jabba that said this, but he’s totally right, if you’re a piercer who works on your own and you want to take on an apprentice, do you have enough work for two piercers? I want to encourage people to evaluate what they actually want from another member of staff. 

In the talks as well, from an apprentices perspective, I just wanted them to know what they were worth and have people understand what exploitation is in the workplace. And for them to know there’s people that have got their back, my inbox is literally always open if anyone wants to talk about it. 

Question everything applies to everything. So when we talk about technique or why have we chosen to do internally threaded rather than externally? As an industry, we discuss and we work things out. But that applies to the situations as well. No one deserves to be exhausted for the chance to do the job they want.

G: I think for a long time piercers have just sort of gotten on with piercing and a lot of us tend to keep our opinions to ourselves for fear of backlash. But if we don’t have the discussions, there’s no progress for the industry. 

E: I was really scared to speak in the Facebook groups for a really long time, for fear of being told that I was wrong. But also being wrong is really the only way that you learn. I think also not having a fear of being disliked is a hard lesson to learn, but it’s one that I’ve definitely learned a lot in my life. 

I understand that, particularly on the internet, I will seem potentially quite abrasive and opinionated and loud, and I don’t think that’s necessarily true in real life. I’m caring and I will fight someone’s corner if I think that they’re being wronged. I don’t mind if industry peers aren’t my biggest fan because my clients are important to me. My friends are important to me, but also I have a life outside of piercing.  I think that’s really important that we don’t live in this echo chamber where the only people we interact with are industry peers and the only thing we do is industry events. You have to create a life outside of it or it will consume you.

Particularly again, as we’ll go back to neurodiversity. It’s really easy for me to get obsessed with anything, so I have to work really, really hard to make sure it doesn’t take over my entire being.

G: I’ve known you for nearly a decade and there was definitely a time period of a few years where piercing was your entire life. 

E: Yeah. It was constant, All consuming. And it nearly killed me,

 I can’t let it do that again. But I think where I am now, I’ve got a really good work-life balance, which was a thing I didn’t think existed. I’ve got a lot of good support. 

You’ve gotta make those things for yourself sometimes. Be an advocate for yourself. 

An evening at Corporation many moons ago
Tetley Hen Do
Elizabeth was my first push into piercing

I’m so thankful to Elizabeth for their time not only in this insightful and honest chat that we had, but for always being so supportive and caring. It’s been a turbulent decade but I’m very excited to see how much they will continue to grow over the next one! Thank you always.

https://www.instagram.com/elizabethmoore_piercing/?hl=en-gb

https://www.facebook.com/ElizabethMoorePiercing

http://bodyalter.uk/

Posted on by — 1 Comment

An Interview with Olly Todd – Piercer & Educator

Anyone who is involved in the body modification world will know Olly Todd. Based in Factotum, Norwich, Olly has been involved in the piercing and modification industry for around 15 years and now runs Cognition Body Art Education where he hold seminars to help educate piercers across the world on techniques and safety. Olly also provides both site and industry specific First Aid training courses across the UK. Both Aiden and Anna (Revenant Tattoo) have worked with Olly over the years and it was a pleasure to have him visit Nottingham recently for some training with our team.

Gemma: What did you do before piercing?

Olly: I was a lifeguard and  a swimming instructor. Basically, when I hit 16 the options were work at the swimming pool or stack shelves in the supermarket. I went and became a lifeguard because the pay was better

I worked at a couple of leisure pools and was teaching kids and adults to swim. I started getting tattooed at a studio that was close to where I was working and one weekend the studio called me to see if I wanted to come and sit on the desk and answer the phone for a few hours because the receptionist hadn’t turned up. If I did, he said he’d knock a few quid off my tattoo session.

So I jumped at it. And then it happened a couple more times, and eventually the guy just turned around and said, ‘well if you want, I’ll just show you how to pierce.’ By that point, the people at the swimming pool were getting a bit more antsy about how tattooed I was getting. I still had nothing on my arms, it was all on my torso mostly hidden. But yeah, it was becoming pretty much a once a month visit for more ink so I got the whole, “if you continue this way, then you’re not gonna get very far in the leisure industry” conversation a few times.

At this point I was life-guarding, teaching swimming lessons, junior life saving and I was also doing the lifeguard training as well. So I was getting to that point where I was gonna have to put a suit on soon and  look presentable in that industry. I’m so glad I didn’t go down that route.

G: Did you have piercings at that time?

O: I didn’t get  my first tattoo until I was around 20, so my first piercing was probably just a bit before that. I did not know back then what I know now. I’d been just toying with the idea of getting a piercing for a while because when I went through college and stuff, I always had bright pink hair, and I was always a bit of a punk, I just hadn’t taken that step to get some holes through me basically. But Norwhich has always had a really good punk scene, all the way back. I’m lucky enough now to be good friends with some of the original, like eighties punk lot that were around. 

My first piercing was my lobe, like most people. And I did everything you shouldn’t do on the list other than going into a high street chain shop. I got them done at Download Festival in the middle of a field. It was done with a gun, I wasn’t sober and I’m sure the person doing it wasn’t sober. It definitely wasn’t clean for three or five days. 

G: Did you have an apprenticeship when you started to pierce?

O: Most of it was kind of watching this guy do one or two of set piercings and then just getting on with it. I had enough friends that would come in and ‘practice’. Largely, I’d say I was more self-taught than anything else. I think anyone that’s been in the industry for like 10, 15 years probably has a similar start. We all, all kind of figured it out as we went along.

G: How did you transition into body modification?

O: I was piercing loads and then I just stumbled across people like Samppa, Steve Haworth, and at that point Mac and a few others. I  really liked what they were doing and luckily I got to do some training with Mac over the years and without his help and support, I wouldn’t have progressed the way that I did. So, special thank you to Mac. I went to a few seminars about modification, I did one on skin branding. I loved branding. It’s always gonna be my favorite modification. After I started piercing, I started realising more about myself. So, I don’t get tattooed for any reason other than I don’t feel complete yet. I couldn’t tell you what the picture is at the end, but I just don’t feel complete and I’m working towards that. In my head, the body mod stuff was really appealing because it was a different way to add and alter myself I suppose, until I found what  I needed to look or feel like.

I learnt a lot about body modification from speaking with Mac and then people like Iestyn as well. I went down to London for a scarring class with Iestyn and Ron Garza at one point and that was a really interesting day. And then at BMXnet, taking as many classes there as possible. 

Live guiche piercing by Cristiano at BMXnet

The first year I was at BMXnet, I was lucky enough to attend a class that Elayne Angel did on genital piercing. That was something else. Being able to take that class and then later on in the day, witness her piercing people as well. It was great.

There’s always the comedy moments at places like that as well, I distinctly remember taking a male genital class with Cristiano teaching and he had someone up on all fours doing a live guiche piercing in front of probably 50 people. I caught up with Cristiano over in Dublin at the Piercer Trade Show last year actually, he didn’t realise I’d been to his BMX class all those years ago. 

G: You’ve worked at Factotum for almost 10 years now, tell us how you started.

O: I’d been drinking with Joe regularly for a while because we all kind of lived in the same area and we all hung out at the same pub. Jokingly for ages, he was like, “you should just come and work for me”. And then, it just kind of happened, which I’m very thankful for. Very thankful to him and without him I don’t think we’d be anywhere near where we are now. He made a lot of things very easy. And working for a piercer makes life so much easier. Joe learned to pierce when he was traveling in New Zealand and he came back to England to set up Factotum. And having the fact that Joe was taught with industry standard jewelry, I mean he was already using brands like Industrial Strengths when I was piercing elsewhere in the city. I think he was probably one of the first people to get NeoMetal as well. It’s been really nice to just be able to step up the game and use all these wonderful companies and not really have to worry about it too much.

G: You now teach at international piercing conferences, can you tell us more about that?

O: I do, it’s becoming a bit more of my life now. Weirdly enough, when you think about it, it’s kind of come full circle from when I used to teach people to swim. I think it’s gonna become more all consuming as well. The balance is shifting for me to start teaching rather than piercing,

I think, seeing the variety of courses and classes at BMXnet got me a bit intrigued about teaching because it wasn’t an elite standard of piercer that teaches the classes. It’s anyone that has something valuable to say. And then going to the UKAPP conference as well, back when it was still in Birmingham with Nici, every year she would poke me, like, ‘so when are you teaching something? When are you teaching something?’ And eventually, I gave in.

CBAE provides piercer education and classes

The first class I ever taught was a color theory class at BMXnet. And then that was followed a week later by the same class at the UKAPP conference . So it all started from there. 

G: I really loved your bevel theory and septum classes. How do you decide on a subject to address in your classes?

O: So to start with, I looked at the classes that I’d taken from other people. The bevel theory one, for instance, was done in a very specific way because I learn by doing things. I’d taken Brian Skellie’s bevel theory class year after year, just as a refresher. It’s a brilliant class, but it’s very word heavy as opposed to anything practical and that’s not how I can take things in. So I thought I’d try and create something for people that are more like me, I suppose.

And then the other ones I’ve been doing like the septum one and there’s one on tricky ear piercing, I just keep an eye on the piercing forums and if something is constantly coming up and people are asking for tips or struggling with a specific thing then I’ll focus on doing a class or seminar for those. Like septum techniques. 

I think it’s important to keep it relevant to what’s going on. 

G: You launched Cognition Body Art Education last year, hosting classes, teaching at events and offering First Aid training. 

O: We’re doing First Aid courses after both the Piercer Trade Show and the UKAPP conference this year, which is awesome. There’s the Bloodborne Pathogens training which is in its final stages of being accredited. Everything I’ve done for the BBP course is based on the UK Health and Safety Executive. It dawned on me the other day that the annoying thing is, because I wrote it, I’m gonna have to do a different one course anyway for it to count.

But yeah, other than that, I’m excited for The Sharp End magazine coming to fruition, that’s definitely a plus for the industry, having a trade magazine. I’ve not seen what’s going in it yet either. I wanna keep it all as a surprise but, we’ve been really, really surprised with the people in the industry that have got involved. We’ve just been blown away with the support by not just friends but the industry as a whole getting involved.

There’s potentially gonna be a rather large announcement at the Piercer Trade Show in April as well, but that’s all I can say for now.

G: I’m excited for what this year holds for the industry in general. I have positive feelings.

O:. Yeah, definitely. There’s so many people that have got so much going on that’s just making everything better. Like Nathan and the guys doing all the work with the Trade Show and bringing over some amazing speakers. The fact that there’s now 3 events in the UK with the two Trade Shows and the UKAPP conference on top of anything that anyone else puts together.

Olly & Louise on their wedding day, 2022!

Once again, a huge thank you to Olly for his time and his continued hard work in this industry. Be sure to check out Cognition Body Art Education, his seminars and courses are invaluable and we are eternally grateful for all the work Olly (and Louise!) are doing to push our industry forward.

Posted on by — Leave a comment

An Interview with Jamie Biggers, Piercer

Jamie is a body piercer and APP member in San Francisco, Bay Area. He is a volunteer for the Body Piercing Archive which works to preserve piercing history. Jamie has been piercing around 11 years and has travelled all over the US, guesting at a wide variety of studios. After spending some time in Europe, Jamie visited us in Nottingham and took some time to chat about his travels, volunteer work and his journey to becoming a studio owner.
Jamie Shamus Biggers

Gemma: What drew you to that industry initially?

Jamie: I always liked piercing and I had some piercings but it was never an intention to be in the industry. I was living in Florida and working, doing pressure washing and painting out in the sun. It was awful. There was a shop that was hiring and so I applied work the front counter just so I would be in air conditioning,

G: What was your first experience getting a piercing?

J: The first one I had, I pierced myself. I pierced my lip with a safety pin but I didn’t keep it in very long. And then the second piercings I ever got were my ears. It was in a friend’s garage and the person who pierced my right ear, the person who pierced my left ear, and the person who was hanging out in the garage with us, all four of us ended up becoming piercers at separate times.

G: Did you have an apprenticeship when you started?

J: It was called an apprenticeship. But like, I didn’t know any better at the time so I thought that’s what an apprenticeship was. But now, knowing what I know, it was definitely not a good apprenticeship whatsoever. It was the owner of the studio, he did piercings but he wasn’t a piercer. The business was about making money. He didn’t care about the industry at all, he didn’t have any piercings. he didn’t have any tattoos. It was a business for him. So yeah, a lot of my learning was on the internet and then leaving Florida and moving to California and being around piercers in the Bay Area.

G: What year were you piercing in Florida?

J: 2012. I’m from California originally. I had moved to Florida, after living in New York. I went from California to New York, then New Orleans, then Florida, and then back to California.

Until moving back to California, I had not really known about the APP, I had not known about quality jewellery and materials. I knew there was different kinds and that some was really expensive and some were not expensive, but like, as far as like the quality between them, I had no idea. It wasn’t until a friend of mine told me more about them and I still didn’t really look into it very much. But then when I moved to California that I realized that there was a difference in quality in studios and in education and quality of jewelry.

I learnt things mostly online, Facebook forums, I had like been on BME when I was younger, but never really while I was piercing. I think it kind of died out by then. And then visiting other studios because I was really close to San Francisco where there are a lot of really good studios, and going down there and talking with people. San Francisco has a lot of piercing history which I was also unaware of when I was getting into the industry. I didn’t know anything, who people were and what studios were like, famous or historical or whatever. No idea.

Which I think helped me not be scared of asking those people who worked there because I didn’t know who they were, so I didn’t realize like who I was asking these questions to. I wasn’t nervous because to me, they were just another peer. But turns out some of them were well known. And then I got encouraged to sign up for the scholarship for the 2016 APP conference and I ended up getting the scholarship going to Las Vegas.

Jamie and Aiden at APP, 2016

G: Was that your first conference?

J: Yeah. And I also didn’t really know what the conference was like. I was still unaware, I knew that it existed, but also, like no one had really talked about it. I’d seen it on forums and stuff but I didn’t know what it was, and then I got there and I was like, oh shit. This is like a big deal.

The whole thing, it changed my mindset about everything. Meeting people there have given me opportunities that like didn’t even know existed. , and just like meeting people and like being able to like do guest spots. Now help out with the conference. and, continue to volunteer and volunteer for different groups and the body piercing archive . Wouldn’t have happened if that wasn’t for conference

G: How did you get involved in the body piercing archive?

J: I’ve always been into history and the more I had been exposed to the industry, the more I realised there’s a real history here and I wanted to help with it. I went to the exhibit at conference and, having already met Paul King and Becky Dill, who were some of the main people doing it at that time. I just asked Paul, “hey if you ever need help, like, let me know”. And he put me to work.

G: What’s your role at the archive?

J: It’s a lot of organizing things, preserving things, making sure things are gonna stand up to the test of time. Most of these things, were never intended to last very long. A lot of this stuff is just like, ‘oh, here’s a magazine that someone bought, read and threw away’. And flyers that like are printed on cheap printer paper or photos that have been sitting in someone’s cabinet for who knows how long going through weather changes. It’s mostly just like making sure that these things will exist in the future.

G: Is it mostly American piercing history that you archive?

J: It’s global. Being where we are, most of it is more local to the US, but it’s not exclusively us. We have a lot of stuff from the UK and unknowingly along the way, it led to us being able to publish a book, the Alan Oversby book. That was mostly Paul King and Devin Ruiz. Hopefully we’ll be able to do more of that. Just to get that history out there.

Paul puts Jamie to work preserving piercing history.

A lot of what we have in the archive, had no intention of ever being saved and when those historic things were happening, I don’t think any of those people thought that anyone would give a shit about what they were doing in the future. A lot of the stuff that we have, we’re lucky that it exists. And there’s so much more that we know of, that doesn’t exist anymore. It got thrown away or you know, ended up in like a flooded basement or rotted away. Or when families have been contacted, they’re like, ‘no, we threw all that away, we don’t want people knowing about that.’ Which is understandable, but also kind of sucks. We have things from the early 1900s and it was such a different time. People were ashamed of being different.

It’s more modern day western body piercing but we do have some artifacts from people indigenous to the Americas, that are much older. Our focus is more modern stuff that maybe universities and museums and other archives don’t give a shit about yet, but one day they will. And hopefully when that time comes, the archive will still be the place where that all that stuff ends up. Or if there’s a better place that has a better way of archiving everything, it’ll go to them.

G: You’re opening a new studio right?

J: Last March we signed a lease, and we’ve have been working with architects and trying to get permits from the city. Now it’s just the city dragging their feet and not communicating with each other. It’s just taking forever. But we have a space we have the layout. We have the materials, we have everything except the ability to construct.

I haven’t always wanted to own my own studio but I didn’t want to move out of the area that I live in and I don’t want to work for other people anymore. I just want to make an environment that’s different than a lot of studios, the way it’s structured and how the pay structures and the hierarchies in the studio. I don’t really want that, l I just want to do it differently than I’ve seen. I’ve seen things I don’t like at other studios and I want to make sure that those don’t exist for someone else.

G: You’ve travelled a lot while guesting as a piercer, can you tell us more about that?

Enjoying Alaska

J: I go to Hawaii a lot to go guest spot, I’ve been up to Portland a bunch of times, Alaska recently. I went out to Boston, a bunch of places in California. It’s cool seeing how other people do things. Pretty much every time I go on a guest spot, I learn something. Even if it’s just like something little. Most of the time for me guesting is a great reason to go somewhere or hang out with friends. Most places I’ve worked at I’ve known someone who worked there or had friends in the area.

G: What sort of differences have you seen in the industry while travelling?

J: Different areas like different jewelry styles more than others. Same with the size of jewelry and people wanting dainty things or people wanting gems or not gems or gold. Even within the Bay Area where I live, it’s drastically different depending on what part of the Bay you’re in and what people are willing to pay or what people are looking for.

It’s definitely a big range of clients. I’ll have, you know, an 18 year old student coming in to get a little diamond in their nostril. And then the person after them is a much older person and wanting big ol’ jewelry in their genitals, and then the person after that is a 20 year old with a 10 gauge septum, and then the person after that is an older, more professional person wanting a dainty helix. It very much ranges at the studio that I’m at. Other studios it’s more consistent with one or the other. But I think just where we are and our established clientele, it’s like very wide range.

We have a lot of clients seeking gender affirming piercings as well. It’s cool and I’m really glad that they feel like our studio is a safe place to do that and that we can help facilitate that .

G: Have you attended conferences outside of the US?

J: Last year was my first time at BMXnet, it was a lot different than the APP conference, in a good way. At least from my perspective, it was more about networking and meeting other people and being part of the community, as opposed to the APP conference where you go to class and then you go do whatever with the couple people you know. I had a descision to make between going to BMX or LBP last year, and I was convinced to go to BMX. I would love to go to LBP though, I just need to get better out Spanish.

Angie and Jamie at BMXnet, 2022

G: Do you have any words of wisdom for other people in the industry looking to travel or guest?

J: Network with people. Just reach out, people aren’t gonna reach out to you so reach out to them. And go in with the understanding that you might not make money. Reach out to people, look at forums and be honest about what your capabilities are. They’ll find out and they’ll find out real quick if you can or cannot do something.

It’s a small industry. Everyone knows everyone, and if they don’t, they will. The internet remembers forever.

Don’t settle for shitty bosses. If you’re being exploited or abused in any way, don’t stay. It’s not worth your mental health. There’s other studios that aren’t like that. Don’t work for shitty bosses.

Huge thank you to Jamie for spending time with us at Rogue, we wish you all the best and hope to see you around the world soon!

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Prince Albert Piercings

Penis piercings are pretty popular but arguably the most popular is the Prince Albert. So what is a Prince Albert piercing and why do so many people have them?

Click here to enlarge

Like most piercings, aesthetics is a big reason for getting a piercing. But with intimate piercings, you get to decide on the audience. This can give people a lot of power and ownership over their bodies. Aside from the visual advantage that the PA can give, it is one piercing that can also provide functionality for some people. During masturbation or sexual intercourse, the sensations for both the wearer and partner can be changed by the addition of a ring or curved barbell.

Currently, in 2022, ball closure rings (BCR) or curved barbells are most commonly worn in the PA. However, it’s unclear as to when this piercing first came to be. We know that ancient tribes all across the world have been piercing their genitals for a multitude of cultural and spiritual reasons since before we had the ability to document the procedure, but the origins of the PA are so far unclear. In the early 70s, Doug Malloy published the ‘Body Piercing in Brief’ flyer (illustrated by Jim Ward) for the Gauntlet. The flyer perpetuated the rumour that Prince Albert, Queen Victoria’s consort, was responsible for the naming of the PA piercing due to sporting one himself. Rogue did a whole blog about this myth which you can read HERE.

Wherever the piercing began, it is a classic genital piercing that has stood the test of time. At Rogue, we perform many Prince Albert piercings. So let’s have a look at the process, and what to expect from your piercing process!

The Consultation

We require an in-person consultation to be performed a minimum of 24 hours before any intimate piercing. This is to ensure you have all the information you need going into the procedure: the good, the bad and the exciting. It’s also to ensure that you are making this decision of your own free will, with informed consent. The 24 hour cooling-off period is in place to protect both our clients and our staff. You can read more about that here.

At the consultation, we will discuss your goals for this piercing. PA’s are performed at a minimum of 2.4mm (10g) thickness for stability, but can commonly be pierced at a higher gauge if the anatomy allows for it. We discuss that with you at the appointment. We want you to feel comfortable and open with us at the studio, as we will need to discuss both masturbation and sexual intercourse with you at the consultation so that you are aware of how this piercing will be effected during the healing stage. We want to make sure you feel easy discussing these topics with us in a safe and understanding environment. We will never kink shame! We just want to make sure you have all the information you need to get the most out of your Prince Albert experience.

We will also chat with you about how this piercing is performed and how to take care of it, which will be covered in this blog shortly! After a cup of tea and a piercing-related chat, we will head into the piercing room for an anatomy check. An anatomy check is vital for all intimate piercings, as no two people are ever the same. Some people are more anatomically suited to Prince Albert piercings than others, due to the size and shape of the glans, the size of the urethra, and the placement of the frenum and local surface blood vessels. We are unable to safely perform this anatomy check via photos, which is one of the many reasons why this consultation needs to be in person and not remote.

The people involved in the anatomy check will consist of two members of staff, plus any chaperone you’d like to bring. We will ask that you make the area available to us by removing/lowering the clothing, and we will give the tissue a quick check over to ensure you are suitable for the piercing you would like. If for any reason, the PA is not suitable for you, we will let you know the reason why, and discuss all of the safe alternatives that would work for you.

How to Prepare & What to Bring

How to use a sanitary towel
  • Make sure you have a good night sleep, and a good protein-rich meal beforehand.
  • Have a shower the morning of your appointment, so you are clean and comfortable. You may also want to bring wet-wipes to freshen up with beforehand.
  • Bring some water and/or a sugary drink with you.
  • We recommend that you also bring a non-scented sanitary towel (for use after the piercing).
  • Make sure you have not consumed alcohol/recreational drugs/blood thinning medication at least 24hours prior to the piercing appointment.
  • Chaperones are always welcome but we politely ask that only one other person (alongside our two members of staff) is in the room at the time of the piercing. This is just to limit the amount of distractions and to maintain a calm, quiet atmosphere.
  • Wear loose clothing that you feel comfortable in – Jogging bottoms, loose skirts or dresses etc. are ideal. Super tight, white jeans are not!

The Procedure

At present we have three piercers who perform Prince Albert piercings. The ‘traditional’ PA enters through the urethra and exits just below the glands of the penis, usually to one side of the frenulum. A ‘reverse’ PA, also enters through the urethra but exits through the top of the glands.

PA wearing a BCR

As those with the anatomy know, this is an area of the body that can change shape and size due to swelling caused by both natural blood flow (erections) and from the piercing itself, as such, the ring that we initially pierce with needs to be a little larger in diameter to accommodate for that. To be very clear, at no point should your piercer ask you to encourage an erection. In fact, quite the opposite! We need minimal blood flow in the area at the time of piercing. More on that later. We also need to make sure the gauge of the ring is thick enough to be stable in the tissue and not cause any damage. Your ring size will be decided with you at the consultation.

At the piercing appointment, as with the consultation, there will be two members of staff in the room and we do recommend you bring a chaperone as additional moral support if you want to. Firstly, you will be asked to lay on the piercing bed and remove any clothing that is obstructing access to the area such as underwear and trousers/jeans. We will then clean the area using skin prep solutions and provide you with a hand mirror so that you can see where we will be marking your piercing. Once you are happy with the marks, your piercer will change into sterile gloves and prepare to start the piercing. We encourage you to focus on your breathing, slow inhales and exhales to calm any nerves. It is very important to know that nothing will happen until you are ready. Once your piercer is lined up and ready to go, we will let you know to take a nice deep breath in and as you exhale slowly, your piercing will be over. We will calmly talk you through each step so that nothing will ever be a surprise to you. Once the jewellery is inserted and the procedure is over, we will provide you with a mirror to have a look at the piercing and check that you are happy with the outcome.

As we briefly mentioned previously, this is a high blood flow area and there may be some bleeding during and after the piercing. We will make sure any bleeding is cleaned and stemmed before you leave. We will also provide you with a sanitary towel (if you did not bring your own) and some sterile gauze to be used when needed once you get home. You may experience some bleeding (especially in a morning) for 5-7days after the initially piercing. This is nothing to be concerned about and can be cleaned easily with a quick shower. You can also expect to see a little bleeding when you urinate for the first few days. Of course, if you do have any concerns about bleeding at any stage, please do not hesitate to get in touch with us.

Prince Albert Aftercare

The Prince Albert piercing is one of the only piercings that we sometimes recommend making your own cleaning solution for. Although we will provide you with a sterile saline solution, it is recommended that you soak this piercing whilst cleaning to allow the saline solution to reach the inside of the piercing. If you prefer to purchase your saline solution, please look for one with as few additives and preservatives as possible that is 0.9% concentration.

If you do not purchase your cleaning solution, you will need non-iodised sea salt and boiled water.

  1. Add 3g of salt to 350ml of boiling water. This is roughly 1/4tsp to a 2/3 filled pint glass (with room to submerge!)
  2. Let the water cool to no hotter than bath temperature!
  3. Submerge your piercing into the warm water and let it soak for a couple of minutes to soften any build up on the inside and outside of the urethra.
  4. Pour away the water and gently remove away any remaining build up (crusties) with a clean piece of kitchen paper or non-woven gauze.
  5. We recommend you urinate after your clean, to flush out any build up on the inside of the piercing.
  6. Gently pat the area dry with clean kitchen paper.
Keep hydrated!

You want to repeat this process up to 3 times per day for the first few weeks while you are healing. You may want to use the sterile saline spray instead of a soak during the middle of the day for your third optional clean. In this case, gently spray the piercing site and the jewellery with a small amount of the saline spray and leave for 30-60 seconds to soften any build up. Wipe away any buildup, and gently dab dry.

While you are healing, it is very important to refrain from sexual intercourse (including oral sex) and masturbation for 4 weeks. This is to prevent bacteria from entering the piercing site and to minimise irritation or trauma caused by movement of the jewellery.

During the healing process, you need to drink lots, and lots, and lots of water so that your urine is diluted. Frequent, hydrated urination will help remove any build up inside the urethra. It is very important to keep yourself hydrated as this will dilute the acidity in your urine and make the healing process much more comfortable.

When you’re ready to re-introduce sex and masturbation (at least 4 weeks after the initial piercing) please make sure that yours and your partner(s) hands are clean and that you are using condoms for the next 4 weeks. Even if it is with a regular partner(s), you need to ensure that you are not getting bacteria or foreign fluids into the piercing site. This does include oral sex. During sex or masturbation, it is important to listen to your body. If something doesn’t feel comfortable, it might not be the right time. Experimenting with positions and pace can help to alleviate some discomfort but it is more important that you give your body the right amount of time to heal. You have a whole life time to enjoy your new Prince Albert piercing, so don’t delay your healing time or cause damage to the piercing by rushing into sexual activities too soon.

Healing Times

Because this is such a high blood flow area, Prince Albert piercings (and genital piercings in general) tend to heal fairly quickly when compared to other areas of the body.

Anatometal large gauge BCR
  • 2 weeks – We recommend booking in for a check up on your piercing so we can ensure everything is going well and perform a downsize of your jewellery if required.
  • 6-8 weeks – You should be around half-way healed, living your life as normal, be able to change the jewellery out yourself if required.
  • 12 weeks – You can expect to be fully healed after roughly 12-14 weeks.

Stretching

Over time, you may find that gravity, lifestyle, and the weight of the jewellery has caused a slight stretch in the piercing channel. This is a natural part of the experience of the Prince Albert piercing.

Some people will want to intentionally increase the gauge (thickness) of their jewellery for a multitude of reasons. We recommend waiting at least 3 – 6 months from the initial piercing before you stretch, to ensure that the channel is stable enough to support thicker jewellery. The team at Rogue can hep you achieve your PA goals by stretching the piercing for you. If you are ever in any doubt, book in for an intimate consultation with a member of our team and we can assess the piercing, and stretch it for you to minimise any issues.

Posted on by — Leave a comment

A very Rogue 2022

It’s that time of year where we’re all reflecting on the last 12 months. What a whirlwind! Coming out of the pandemic and navigating a post-Covid world has been interesting. This year, Rogue welcomed two more full-time piercers to the team – Breo and Gemma! Jay has excelled phenomenally through their apprenticeship under Aiden, from picking up a needle for the first time in February to piercing unaided and making amazing connections with clients – Jay is smashing it! Aiden and Breo had a busy 2022 too. Travelling to Berlin for the BMXnet conference in September, followed swiftly by the UKAPP conference where Aiden taught a class on surface finishing and Breo supported Inari Organics at the exposition. Kat also taught their first class this year! After graduating from Nottingham University with a Bsc in Zoology, Kat taught Piercing Wound Healing Dynamics at the UKAPP conference to a packed room of piercers!

We’ve had some amazingly talented guests visit us to pierce at Rogue this year too! Flavio stopped by this autumn, all the way from Brazil! It was such a pleasure to meet and work with him. Recently we’ve had our good friend Andre stay with us from Berlin, Andre brought a wealth of knowledge to the team as well as a cosy DVD evening at the studio and some amazing piercing work!

Who knows what next year holds in store for us, but as always we are eternally grateful to our clients for keeping us busy and for supporting us through all the changes 2022 has brought! (and thankyou from Gemma for welcoming me to the team!)

Let’s take a look at some highlights! Starting with the Head Rogue himself, Aiden! We celebrated 3 years since Aiden opened the doors to Rogue, from humble beginnings surviving on noodles and a small heater, to having a team of 5 operate 7 days a week to make Nottingham shine! Aiden has lots of plans for 2023 and we can’t wait to see what’s in the works.

Cheeks are one of Aiden’s specialities
Large gauge labret
We love navels and we love big needles!



Breo joined as a full-time, resident piercer in January this year and has been loving all the large gauge and complex projects you guys have trusted him to perform. Breo has had a busy year, flying to Berlin with Aiden for BMXnet, then back to the UK for UKAPP where he represented both Rogue and Inari Organics, bringing high quality, implant grade jewellery to the UK. Breo also took part in the Piercer Trade Show which was held in Ireland for the first time in 2022!

Intricate double helix project for Nikki
Large conch love
A sweet double vertical lip

It’s been a whirlwind of a year for Gemma aswell. Joining the team in January, Gemma started as a Junior Piercer, working under Aiden and Breo to develop her skills and build on her experience. Gemma became a UKAPP member this year, attending her first conference where she met some amazing people. Gemma has been working on documenting the experiences of people in the industry and has interviewed several peers for the Rogue Blog. We hope there’s more to come!

‘Amity’ faux rook
Re-piercing Jay’s jestrum was a highlight
A septum was the first piercing Gemma did at Rogue

Jay is piercing! As Aiden’s apprentice, they have been working incredibly hard and learning so much. Jay picked up a needle for the first time in February and pierced Aiden’s helix (no pressure!), now they’re signed off on several piercings and can confidently perform lip, helix, lobe, navel and nipple piercings without guidance. Jay has overcome a lot of challenges this year and we are all so, so proud of them for sticking around and working hard. Jay is going to take the world by storm. Keep your eyes peeled for more of their shenanigans in 2023!

Anodised, pierced and photographed by Jay
First up, the mentor
Stunning philtrum!

Kat has had a year full of accomplishments. They have created so many beautiful and thoughtful curations with our clients and continued to design incredible custom pieces for both our customers and our cabinets. Kat celebrated their graduation from Nottingham University with a Bsc Hons in Zoology and is currently studying for their Masters degree in Immunology! It was a big year at UKAPP as Kat taught their first class, educating piercers on Wound Healing Dynamics. Expect more science and more sparkles from Kat in the upcoming year!

Graduation day!
Kat has worked on so many custom pieces
Teaching at UKAPP, 2022

And last but certainly not least, our honorary Rogue and full time Revenant, Anna Garvey! Together Anna, Revenant, Rogue and Un1ty tattoo raised over £500 for the Mastectomy Tattoo Alliance this year by hosting a fund raising weekend. Anna has created some phenomenal artwork this year and it’s been amazing to see all of her stunning designs come to life. Anna spent the summer in Peru, riding horseback through the mountains and emerging herself in nature, ready to bring that inspiration into the new year! We love working so closely with Anna and Revenant and we’re so excited to see more creativity and beauty from them.

Thank you once again to everyone who has visited us this year, all our fantastic clients, our friends, family, piercers who have come to visit or guest with us, the continued support of our industry means the world to us. See you all in 2023!

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Interview with Andrenalin Body Art

Andre is a body modification artist living in Berlin, Germany. He met Rogue founder Aiden at the Las Vegas APP conference in 2015 and they have been close friends ever since, travelling around Europe and guest at the same studios. Although not his first language, Andre speaks English amazingly and while guesting with us in Nottingham, he took the time to chat with Gemma about his experience as an artist. Andre is a wonderful person, piercer and all round sweetheart. We were very privileged to spend time with Andre this year, both at the studio and at the UKAPP conference in Manchester this year. You can find him on Instagram at @andrenalinbodyart

G: What was your first experience with piercing or body modification?

Andre: My first not professional experience with body piercing was in the late nineties, I would say 1999 when I got my eyebrow pierced, because that’s what we did. I think it might have been even the same year, I saw the music video for Fire Starter, The Prodigy. And that was the first time that something clicked in my head and I got my tongue pierced. I still say that The Prodigy did a very big thing of bringing me into body piercing. I’ve always wanted to be a body piercer, even in my first apprenticeship where I was a caretaker for disabled children. Whenever somebody asked me, what I was gonna do after the apprenticeship, I would always say that I’m gonna be a body piercer. I started to harass the body piercer that would do all my piercings to please gimme an apprenticeship.

Andre in Mexico , 2019

 When my apprenticeship as a caretaker was over and I took on a job where I was working in a school for disabled children, my workday ended at 2:00 PM so I went back to the studio and told her like, “Hey, I’m not joking, I really want to become a body piercer. I have a job, you don’t have to pay me, you just have to teach me.” And then she said “you’ve been annoying me now for two years or even longer and at some point I’m gonna need somebody.” So she gave me the chance and that was that was in the beginning of 2010.

G: Whereabouts did you grow up in Germany?

A: I’m from a small town called Schwäbisch Hall in South Germany. Like 40,000 people lived there and I lived there until around 2012. I would say for the size of the town, we have a very big alternative and left wing scene. There’s a sort of organised club which opened in 1966 and has been open ever since. Self organised. There was a small, independent cinema and we have an alternative radio station. So there is a lot of, I would say, punk rock stuff going on. I wouldn’t say that there was a particular piercing scene, but if you take the circle of piercing scene and punk rock, it is quite a big overlap. So that studio where I first worked was going really well. There was a lot of work to do, which gave me the chance to get a lot of experience within a really short time. We were super busy and also now when I go back there sometimes to do body modification guest spots, I’m surprised every time how many people are interested even in those small towns.

G: Was your journey into body modification a natural progression from piercing or did they happen simultaneously?

A: In the beginning, I was only interested in body piercing. But I always had a very big interest in medical procedures and I think if I wouldn’t have been that lazy in school, maybe I would be a surgeon today. I find cosmetic surgery especially interesting. When people in my small village got their nose done, some people would judge them and I would always be like “how did that work?” So, it came shortly after I started piercing, when I started doing research in magazines and online. There is a magazine in Germany called Expand. It was really cool because it’s the only magazine I’m aware of that was in the German language and was covering all sides of body modification. Piercing, tattoo, heavier body mods, performance art, suspension. And it was really nicely written. I think there was like 12 or 13 issues. BMEzine made me really curious about body modification as well. When the topic of body modification comes up, someone will always mention BME because it brought us all together. I wasn’t a part of the BME community, I have to say, I was just looking, reading and being fascinated, but I didn’t really talk to many people on there. Then when I dug deeper into the body mod world, I found copies of the book Mod Con: The Secret World of Extreme Body Modification by Shannon Larratt and it opened my eyes to a whole new world of body modification.

And then I think it must have been 2010 we went on a tattoo convention in Berlin and I had a seminar about Introduction to Body Modification by Lukas Zpira. Pretty quickly during that seminar of him, I realized I am not ready for that. Before attending, I thought “hey I’m a body modification artist now.” And he actually showed me like, no, you’re not. And I’m still thankful that I left that seminar with that knowledge that I am definitely not ready to offer body mods like implants, at that time. It’s a whole different game to piercing. And I’m very thankful that Lukas was very open. He didn’t promote it. He gave really good information and I had the same experience the year after at BMXnet. I had a scarification seminar with Ron Garza, one of my big heroes in the piercing and scarification world. And I had the same feeling, I wanted to do scarification. And after that seminar, I knew, okay no you are not ready. You have to increase your knowledge about hygiene and wound healing. Nowadays I offer both procedures. I started years after when I finally felt safe and found a mentor.

Hand implant performed by Andre.

G: Did you have any body modifications when you started learning to perform them?

A: I had tattoos and piercings before for sure. I think in like 2003 I did a small branding on my own hand, which faded because it was too shallow. In 2012 I moved to Berlin and in 2013 I started to work at Naked Steel. Naked Steel at that time was a dedicated body piercing Studio. So we didn’t have any tattoo artists and it was one of the top addresses in Germany for heavier body modifications. I’m not sure how much they do nowadays, but in those days, that was the studio to go to. I started assisting on several kinds of body modifications. I was actually assisting on implants procedures before I got my implants on my hand. I was assisting on scarifications before I got my own, so I think I learned about body mods before any.

G: What was the first scarification you had done?

Andre’s original logo, peeled onto his chest

A: It was a skin peeling on my chest. It’s my logo, well a version of my logo. We changed it to a needle blade, back in the day as it was a cannula needle. It’s an anarchy sign made from a circular barbell, a barbell, a scalpel blade, and a needle. I had that logo way before I was planning on opening a studio or becoming a traveling artist, but that logo was in my head for a really long time and that was the first scarification I got on my chest.

G: Was your experience learning to perform body modifications, in terms of scarification and implants, similar to your apprentiship as a piercer?

A: Well I have to be honest, my piercing apprenticeship was different. I grabbed the needle before I knew the theory. Back in those days I was happy that I could do piercings really fast. I didn’t have to wait months or even years until I could do piercings. When I look back at it now, I would do it different. But with body modification, I did it the proper way. I learned about the do’s and dont’s before I started doing it. At Naked Steel we did many ear reconstructions, making lobes larger or smaller. We would do like cartilage punches, tongue splits. I did magnet implants, which was also the first procedure I ever did on my own. My first one is not there anymore, it rejected really quick. It was my best friend and he knew that this was my first procedure. I put in a second magnet in the same finger after the first came out and that is still in there today. Must be like 9 or 10 years ago now. We didn’t do any ear pointing because I think ear pointing is a top of the art procedure. I’m only aware of one artist in the world that I would trust to point my ears, and that’s also the only person I would recommend clients to and that’s Samppa von Cyborg. Most other ear pointings I see either I don’t like the aesthetic of it, or you mainly see ones where there’s so much tension on the ear that I’m doubting that they will heal nice. Samppa’s work is very impressive. He would come to Naked Steel back in the day, like once a year he would guest with us. I didn’t learn from Samppa, but still he helped me a lot during my career. Especially in the first years because when We met in person, I knew I could ask him all the questions and he would always take time to answer it. So he didn’t teach me, but he was a big supporter to me.

G: Your hand implants are awesome, and your coin slot too! What other modifications do you have and how has that changed over the years?

A: To be honest, I’m scared of getting a piercing. I freak out on a regular basis when I get pierced. And I have the same with all kinds of body modifications. So if somebody would’ve told me 15 years ago that I was going to have implants on my hand, I would definitely not have believed that person. For me, curiosity kills the cat, and for me it was the deeper I got into a topic, reading about it, talking with people and seeing the procedure, the less scared I became. So I got a magnet implant and scarification pretty early on, then I got the implants in my hands. I have a huge question mark and exclamation mark on my hands. I dunno why, but I wanted to get them tattooed for a really long time. And when I then saw that silicon implants were an option, I decided to get them as implants.

Any modifications that I offer to clients, I usually try to get them done first on myself. It’s important to know what I’m actually doing to those people and to have the theory knowledge as well as the practical experience on how things feel, how things heal. The coin slot is pretty much the last thing I got done. I had it done, but I had genuine keloid, not an irritation bump, a keloid that I had to have removed about one and a half years after I got the coin slot. I think that must be like 4 years old by now. And since then, I had a couple suspensions but haven’t had much more modifications done.

Andre receiving a tongue split, 2015

G: How was suspension for you? What was that experience like?

A: I always struggled to explain how it is for me. Everybody will have different experience of it. I can only talk about my experience and for me, I have some issues focusing on things, especially focusing on myself and on things that are important to me. I always forget to take care of me. And body suspension, I would always say for me, it’s like a reset button. During the suspension, everything is on mute. It’s just about me. Having a suspension usually feels like restarting the system. And I have to say I love the adrenaline, the serotonin that you get afterwards. After my first suspension, I was totally high for another 24 hours , in a very good way. It was Easter Friday, when Jesus got pierced, me and my best friend in that time had our first suspension and I had to work the day after. I just remember it being one of the best days I’ve ever had at work. I was so cantered. I was just super happy. And I remember that in the evening I had the last client of the day and my co-workers were already finished sitting in front of the studio, having a cigarette, having a beer and I went out just like smiling and said “Wow! That was such an amazing day!” And I will never forget the faces of my ex-boss and my co-worker. They were looking at me and like, are you kidding us? So they obviously had like a really stressful day, but for me there was no stress at all. It really balances me but I have had some suspensions and times where I didn’t feel good. That’s where that idea of my reset button comes from. When my feet hit the ground again, it always feels like, “okay, I’ll start over again and get my shit together”. I think I’ve done 5 or 6 suspensions in my life and all of them were just two hooks in the back, the so-called “suicide suspension” position. I keep thinking about trying something else, but that position gives me so much so I know that it’s very good for me. When I’m suspended I like to swing around and jump around and be like a little kid on hooks. And so the two points in the back just gives me all the freedom to move and jump.

Suspending with the Gorilla Glass team in Oaxaca, Mexico 2019

G: Germany has a bit of a global reputation for having quite a hardcore kink and fetish scene, do you see that expressed in body mods?

A:  I would not necessarily say in body modes, but we can definitely see that in genital piercings. I was working in a studio in Berlin. And that area is a very rainbow pride, very open, very kinky area. And we could see that reflected in our clients. Heavy genital piercing projects are not very common, but it’s definitely around. So I would not say no to that question, but I don’t get to see heavy like Mod Con style genital work. Which is probably out there, but I think especially those people that have that experience with their own body, they’re so very often not so outgoing about it. You might see an old guy wearing a proper business outfit and you never know what body mods they have.

But that’s where body mod comes from. Back when Jim Ward opened the first piercing studio, Gauntlet, it was a different time. It was the seventies and body piercing was not very common. And especially on men, it was even less common. So they would start piercing their nipples and their genitals and you wouldn’t see that if you see pictures of them. And I find that fascinating.

G: The stigma around body modification has started to get better, but we still see the remnants of it. Especially when it comes to men and piercings.

A: It depends on where in the world you are. I was traveling quite a bit the last 15 years and I had really weird conversations about my piercings with people. In Zambia, when I was traveling through East Africa in 2011, I was looking different than today. I didn’t have my hand implants, I had less tattoos, I had still all of my facial piercings. And I got into situations like, “what about you remove your piercings and start becoming a real man”, and then I’d tell them to go fuck themselves. That’s the end of the conversation. But the last few years, I have been working for a very fancy jewellery company, a piercing company and I see that people are way more open towards modified people than like 10 or 15 years ago. And I really like to play with that as well. I really like to show that I can be super professional, that I can be super compassionate and a nice person still looking the way I’m looking and I really enjoy when I’m sitting in a packed underground train in Berlin and I’m the first one to get up if there’s an older person. And I enjoy their faces when when you see that, they just learnt something about making assumptions.

G: Can you tell us more about your travels?

A:  What was really impressive to me was when I was traveling to countries where several kinds of body modifications are not a modern thing. Meaning in Germany a hundred years ago, I’m not aware that people would do scarification, for example. But when you travel to countries like Zambia where scarification has been practiced for many thousands of years, it’s really interesting. I tried to get in touch with someone offering scarification or someone who could tell me a little bit more, which I couldn’t manage when I was last in Zambia. It was easier in Tanzania, for example, I met a young boy from the Maasai tribe and he would tell me about stretched ears. He loved that I have my ears stretched. He didn’t have his stretched and we were talking about it and he told me “that’s something my grandmother would do.” And that was cool for me to hear. It’s very different in the western world.

Fakir Musafar, Andre, Jim Ward and Elayne Angel at the APP conference, Las Vegas, 2015

I was traveling to Borneo aswell where tattooing is a really old practice and they would pierce apadravyas for a really, really long time. So that was really interesting getting in conversations with people, learning the history of it. I’ve not travelled too much outside of Europe but I think the piercing and body mod scene, especially the last couple years, it’s getting more together. In Germany, for example, 6, 7, 8 years ago, hygiene was a very big topic. Also with all the different associations, in Germany, in England, Poland, Benelux etc, I think the piercing community is getting closer together.

G: You’re a founding member of the Verband Professioneller Piercer How did that come to be?

A: I’m a co-founder and I have to be honest, it wasn’t my idea. I have a very close friend, Loreia from Stuttgart and also my friend Tom who’s not offering piercing anymore and we had a Whatsapp group where we would just have an exchange and talking about piercings. One day, we were thinking that we should start something similar to the Ask A Professional Body Piercer forum on Facebook. Then the idea just became bigger and bigger and we were like, this needs to be more than just a Facebook group, we are starting an association now. That was in 2015. The most important thing with starting the association was bringing back my experience from the APP conference in Las Vegas the year prior. I wanted to help people come together, it doesn’t matter which standards you are working to right now, the only thing that matters is do you want to get better standards? Do you want to become better? And just trying to bring people together and sharing knowledge. In general, it’s not easy to get good information online. There is a shit ton of good information out there, but especially when you’re a newbie, it’s really hard to to know what is good information and what is bad information. And many people wouldn’t know all this information. I don’t blame people for not knowing things. I would blame people for knowing things and still not doing it better. Then we came up with the piercer round tables. So every three months, we would have piercer meetups. We would meet in a random city, or a coffee place and get some piercers in. We usually had like a 20 minute seminar, some topic just to break the ice and then we would have piercing conversations afterwards. Couple years ago, we set up a hygiene seminar for body piercers with Dr. Helge Hanitzsch. It was a five day, seminar and you got a European wide certification so you can prove all over Europe that you learned those things and then you can apply them.

A round table meeting of the Verband Professioneller Piercer (VPP)

Then Covid hit. During Covid, our board changed. Elected positions were changed. I was vice president for two years, then I was president for two years and I left the board around 2020. I did it for five or six years and sometimes it’s just time to step aside and let somebody else do the job. So at the moment there is not so much happening with the VPP. We’re still getting new members and we’re planning on going back to offering the round table talks. I see many body piercers in Germany growing their standards. So I think maybe in the next year or in two years, there might be a ton of applications.

Many things are changing at the moment. I mean, we all know about the jewellery ordering situation from the US for example. It’s hard, especially when you first ordered high quality jewellery and then maybe the first batch doesn’t sell so quick and that’s scary. A few months ago I started to work as a sales representative for NeoMetal and we opened the warehouse within the EU. So jewellery will be shipped from the Netherlands and it’s gonna be shipping in 2 to 4 days in Europe. I think that can make a huge, huge impact in the European industry because now we have Anatometal, Industrial Strength and now NeoMetal in Europe. I think in 2014, I started to work with NeoMetal, fell in love with that company, with Mark and then John immediately and I’m promoting that company ever since. But now it’s just official. I’m really excited to work and to see like a whole different field in body piercing and to work for a company that I really admire.

G: Whats in the future for Andrenalin Body Arts?

A: At the moment I want to focus on traveling a bit more. Because I love to be working, traveling and hanging out with friends. So whenever I’m in Nottingham, it’s like amazing. I wanna focus a bit on that. But the idea is to open my own little studio in East Germany, towards spring. And finally do it before I’m too old to. I don’t want a huge studio, I want to have a small, nice studio where everybody feels welcome. And I Need a place where I can finally showcase all the artefacts I have collected over the years from the industry. At the moment they’re just in my apartment so it would be nice for people to see my collection.

Check out Andre’s work at @andrenalinebodyart

Once again, big thank you to Andre for his time and for all he has done for our industry over his career so far. A true talent, kind soul and a good friend. We hope to see you soon! – Love, The Rogues x

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Interview with a Rogue – Kat Henness

It’s a Sunday evening after a very busy weekend at Rogue. The weather outside is cold and drizzly but deep in the basement of Rogue, sitting on the floor like goblins, Gemma and Kat have an open and honest discussion about Kat’s journey so far. Kat joined Rogue three years ago and is now the studio manager and jewellery specialist. Growing up in Wales and moving to the big Nottingham city, Kat is now studying for their Master’s degree alongside keeping this Rogue circus going!

  Gemma: Tell me about your first experience with piercing.

Baby Kat with minimal piercings! (a Katten…)

Kat: My first experience with piercing was similar to a lot of peoples, it was at a high street shop with a piercing gun. I was 11. My mum took me there because that’s… just where you went. And I had an awful time healing them. My first piercing at a “real” piercing studio was at a place called Nobby’s in Carmarthen, Wales (Should out to Mike, the piercer there at the time!). The piercing room was in the attic of the studio. It was carpeted, had grimy fabric curtains and I was pierced with non-sterile jewellery directly out of a wet autoclave (with no lid!) that was on a wooden table next to the piercing chair. I asked to get my second lobes pierced and they said they’d run out of jewellery! They gave me the address of a local head shop that also sold piercing jewellery, where I went and bought the jewellery that they then put through the ultrasonic and pierced me with. And of course as an indestructable 14 year old, I healed them like a treat.

My next piercing experience really started when I started uni. I went to a local Nottingham studio and I had an okay experience. There wasn’t really any aftercare advice or customer service. After that, I decided I wanted some fancy jewellery and when I went back to that studio, they recommended I visit a gentleman called Aiden, who just opened a shop in Nottingham a couple of weeks previous. So two weeks after Aiden opened Rogue, I walked in the front door and bought my first piece of BVLA.

G: So you started as a client at Rogue before you joined the team?

Absolutely! I would just come in, get a piercing, upgrade some jewellery, have a chat, hang out, ask questions. And I’m guessing Aiden saw something good in me because he invited me to a suspension event he was holding at the studio. It was literally days before Covid hit. The suspension event was my first taste of the real UK (and international) piercing industry. I met a lot of people I’m now really good friends with. That’s where I met Andre! But I was living alone in Nottingham when the first lockdown was looming. The borders had shut, so I couldn’t go home to Wales and Rogue really was my island in the storm. It was the only thing I had left. So I just kept turning up.

As the lockdowns came, we suddenly had an influx of jewellery from the closure of another high-quality piercing studio, most of which was completely unlabelled in tubs and plastic bags, all jumbled together, different sizes and styles. So it was my job to basically be a detective and try and figure out what was what, what brand, what size. Some BVLA, some Anatometal, some Industrial Strength, and a whole lot of labrets! There must have been 600 to 700 individual items that I had to figure out what they were! That took most of the first lockdown. Then we were photographing it, adding to the web store, building the web store from a very small collection to the absolute monster it is now. And that’s where I learnt a lot of my basic jewellery skills. Just having to look at the fine details between an Anatometal clear CZ and a NeoMetal clear CZ, both prongs, both in titanium. Trying to seperare them out by the little difference. And all the various labrets… Labrets were a nightmare.

G: You’re the studio manager and jewellery specialist at Rogue, what do those roles entail?

K: There’s a bit of everything. Staff management, jewellery management, stock control, free therapist… Managing clients, being Aiden’s personal assistant, organising guest artists and flights and hotels and UKAPP membership, writing blogs, organising the social media. In about two and a half years, I’ve helped to grow the Rogue social media accounts from about 1000 to nearly 10,000 followers. It’s been hard work and I think a lot of it has been down to consistency and the quality of the content. I know a lot of studios where it’s quantity, not quality and that means they can really struggle to build the following. But also, the following isn’t that important. It’s the people who walk through the front door that counts.

The vast majority of the people who follow us on Instagram aren’t even in the UK . But I think people can look at our Instagram and get a sense of not just the work that we produce, but who we are as people That is something I’ve always struggled with though, because we do “sell” a lot of ourselves as part of our work. We could put up way bigger boundaries and not get so personal on the social media. But I feel like it’s a personal service and you have to give a little bit of yourself for people to trust you.

G: As the first Associate Member of the UKAPP, I know you get asked this a lot but, why aren’t you a piercer?

K: I feel like piercing is the least interesting part of being in a piercing studio. I feel like although there’s a lot of techniques you can learn and there’s loads of different ways to put that jewellery into someone, you can still have a much wider impact on the industry by running a good business and managing a good studio. And I think actually piercing people would ham up a lot of my time that could be better spent elsewhere. I love talking to people about jewellery, I love working with clients and making the sales. That’s the bit I enjoy.

G: You’ve got a BSc Hons degree in Biology and you’ve recently started your Masters in Microbiology and Immunology. How’s that going?

K: It’s going really well. I feel like I’m a lot more mentally prepared to tackle the workload this time around. I have a lot more self-discipline. I no longer think that getting up at 7AM to go to a 9AM lecture is that hard. I no longer look at 3 hours worth of lectures in one day and think “oh my god, I can’t do this!”

I would consider myself quite a “modified person” and now that I’m studying for my Master’s, I can absolutely see why some people make a choice between pursuing higher education and pursuing their body modification journeys. It’s a difficult topic to talk about, but the fact that I have a 6mm chunk of metal in my face has no bearing on how well I can learn. I would love to see what further education and academia looks like in 20 or 30 years because… the amount of students we pierce? – some of them have to keep ’em in. My academic achievements aren’t recognized by piercers and they aren’t recognized by academics because of my modifications. It’s quite frustrating sometimes.

It’s very difficult, but I do feel like if I was to pursue a career in academia, I would face significant challenges because of the body modification work, the piercings, the tattoos. A huge amount of your funding and your career mobility is down to face-to-face interviews or who you know within academia. And if those people don’t want to know you because you look like a certain way, you are stuck. And that is really annoying. In my master’s degree so far, I’ve felt like I have to work three times as hard as everyone else to prove myself.

Graduating in 2021, BSc Biology (Hons).

G: You taught a class at UKAPP this year about Piercing Wound Healing Dynamics, do you have plans to teach again now that you’re back in education?

K: My class this year went better than I possibly could have expected. I did a lot of public speaking when I was younger during my college years and my first year of uni but because of Covid, I felt like my confidence was knocked quite a bit. But as soon as I got up on that stage and opened my mouth, it was like I’d never stopped! It was so much fun, the engagement was good and I think I pitched it at the right level. I would absolutely love to teach again. I think I will be constantly editing and updating the class to make sure it’s dialled in and accurate to current scientific understanding. But I would love to also teach about infection control and aseptic technique and what an infection actually is and how/why your body’s reacting to it the way it does. I think that would be super interesting.

G: As a very active member in the online piercing industry, have you faced any difficulties because you’re not a piercer yourself?

K: Absolutely, I have. It’s not normally to my face, but I do hear about people discussing my relevancy within the industry and whether my opinion’s actually worth anything. Some piercers think I’m disrupting people who are very comfortable doing things a certain way, because they’ve always done it that way, and they haven’t seen issues from their methods. For example, non sterile gloves for piercing procedures, poor hand hygiene, wearing watches, rings, acrylic nails. I want to ban them! People have issues with that because they don’t see the effects, and they think I’m being pedantic or splitting hairs. But it’s someone’s body. It’s somebody’s health. Being pedantic is kind of the point. And if you’re not being pedantic about hygiene, you shouldn’t be piercing people. If you didn’t know any better, that’s one thing, but if you know better, you should do better.

Kat’s class at UKAPP 2022

When I’m trying to educate people, I will always try to come at it like they are trying their best because nobody wakes up in the morning and thinks “I’m gonna mess people up today and I’m not gonna wash my hands while I do it.” Every person out there is doing the best they can with the knowledge and the resources that they have. We are not here to gatekeep information. We’re here to try and make sure everyone’s doing the best they can. If every piercing studio in the UK was working at our level, I wouldn’t be bitter about it. I would be immensely proud, and then look at ways we can go further.

G: You’ve been really vocal about your neurodivergence, how do you balance that with managing Rogue and studying for your Master’s degree?

K: It’s a struggle sometimes. It’s not easy and it’s not always fun. It’s mainly about knowing when to communicate when you’re struggling. Everyone at Rogue is super supportive and everyone here wants everyone else to be doing their best all the time. It’s about knowing your limits. And I’m not good at that, but I’m working on it. I think when I first started, I wanted to prove myself and I wanted to prove that I could do it and that I was worth the money being spent on me. But I was consistently (and without fail) pushing myself to burnout on a weekly basis. Now I’ve been at it a while and I think I’m finally getting to a point where I know my limits. My autism can make communicating difficult and I don’t enjoy talking about things sometimes but it’s definitely worth doing.

G: If you could change anything about the UK piercing industry, what would it be and why?

K: I wish piercers were more open-minded. I feel like if people were more willing to learn and change, the industry would be in a much better position overnight. It doesn’t matter where you’re at. If people were more open minded to actually listening and enacting change, the industry would be light years ahead.

Another thing I’d change, let’s stop this massive push towards everyone being self-employed and running their studios. Not every piercer can possibly be qualified to run their own business successfully. And there is absolutely no shame in admitting that. There’s lots of benefits to being employed! Like sick pay, holiday pay, and you have people to bounce ideas off and learn from. One of the main benefits is you’ve got massive amounts of support. Even if it’s something as tiny as forgetting to open something but you’ve already got sterile gloves on – you can always ask for help and you have that support. And that shit happens all the time. It could be something small as that. It could be something like, ‘I need someone to help me assist on this genital piercing.’ Or something hasn’t gone quite to plan and even if something goes wrong, you have 1 – 4 people around who are all specifically trained in what to do in that moment.

Kat, Jay and their chunky septums.

It also helps with your general learning and your confidence as a person. And because we work as such a dynamic team and we have that support at all times, we can offer piercings to people who other people might feel uncomfortable with. For example, we do a lot of genital piercings at Rogue. Obviously, genital piercing and kink have a huge history. Because we work in a team, there’s multiple people around and you are never alone with that client. The vast, vast majority of clients are just excited about a process that they’ve potentially been looking forward to for 30 years. We’re very privileged to be able to offer a huge amount of intimate work to a huge amount of different people across many, many walks of life for many different reasons. A lot of what we do is because we are super proud of the history of body piercing! You wouldn’t get BVLA, Anatometal, NeoMetal, you wouldn’t get the tiny little gold tri-bead in a nose piercing, you wouldn’t get to pierce a kid’s first lobes at nine – without the hefty kink and genital work of the past. And I feel like if you just focus on one of those things without at least acknowledging the presence of the other, you’re doing the industry a disservice.

And that’s another benefit of working in a team. We have piercers who offer a range of services. Not every piercer will perform every piercing that is available on our menu. It’s just about working with different skill sets and where people excel and playing into their strengths while working to improve their weaknesses.

G: You wear a lot of BVLA, if you could design a piece what would it look like?

K: I honestly think I’d want to design wedding bands and engagement rings over body jewellery. BVLA have got body jewellery down, they know what they’re doing and if you can imagine it, they’ve probably made it already. I really love their classic designs, the ones that are statement pieces but still very mature. ‘Afghans’, ‘trillions’, ‘marquise fans’. Pieces where the gemstones really speak for themselves. If I had to choose though, I’d love to see more work with channel settings because they’re really lovely.

G: A lot of people have full BVLA piercing curations thanks to you and your artistic vision, talk us through the curation process.

K: Honestly, it’s the most fun part of my week every single time. When you book in, it’s about 20 minutes, but it depends on how long you’ve got. If you’ve got an hour and a half to spend talking jewellery, I’ll sit and drink tea and talk jewellery with you for hours.

Talking about jewellery with clients is really personal, we get really into it. Especially with long-term curation projects, you can be in communication with people for a long time, sometimes over a few years and you really get to know those people over that time. Body jewellery is such a personal thing and sometimes you’re designing a curation that someone will wear for the rest of their life. You have to know that person well enough that you can make suggestions about what they would like. The most important thing is communication and being able to get your ideas onto paper and make sure that they know exactly what they’re getting when you translate that into concept into body jewellery and then that jewellery into a reality.

Oftentimes, people are spending thousands on curation and in order to ensure that it is a worthy investment, you have to make sure they’re confident in you every step of the way. There shouldn’t be any doubts in their mind that you are using their money wisely to create a life-long piece of art that they can wear forever.

Email kat@roguepiercing.co.uk to start your curation!

G: What’s in the future for Rogue?

K: Taking over the world, obviously… I feel like me and Aiden are always doing plans and plots. In the next 18 months I’d love to be able to launch a Patreon with piercer educational content. Because, as many people have so kindly pointed out, some of the content that I want to put out into the industry isn’t super relevant to the blog system that we already have. And I feel like, especially with the knowledge that I have and the qualifications I have behind me, and the experience of the studio and the opinions that we wanna share as well… It is worth sharing that on a different platform.

The blog is still gonna keep going and it’s still going to have all of the information that it has on it right now. But I think it would be nice to do a few series of things that are very specific to piercing studio staff and not necessarily information that general clients particularly need or might want. Apart from that, we’re always looking to expand to more piercers. Maybe a new premises, maybe a new city, but that’s a long way in the future and very vague at the minute. We’re working with local jewellers to create custom lines. There’s all sorts in the works.

G: Any advice you want to give to apprentices/front of house/people that are just starting?

K: Number one thing, leave your ego at the door. Especially if you’ re new in the industry, you are gonna make mistakes, you are going to do bad piercings and you are going to embarrass yourself and you need to not have an ego about it. You need to be able to humbly ask people who know more than you questions and take their answers on board without getting shitty about it. It’s the Dunning-Kruger effect; the relationship between confidence and competence. So when you know almost nothing, but you know a little bit, you are at the peak of mount stupid and that’s where you think you know everything and you are super confident about it.

Don’t run into this industry, all guns blazing. Be quiet, listen, and then open your mouth. Don’t open your mouth and then start arguing with people. It’s so important to never stop asking questions. Always question why you’re doing things because so much of what you do generally becomes part of a routine. And if you can’t think about why you’re doing things, you’re gonna struggle to improve later on. Learn from your mistakes and if someone points out your mistakes, don’t get defensive.

I also wish more people understood that front-of-house doesn’t just have to be a stepping stone to an apprenticeship. front of house is a career in itself. In America, front-of-house is a recognised, respected career and that is something that we need to definitely bring over here because a good front-of-house can be life or death for studios.

Shout out to David Angels for supporting my nonsense and making sure I was sane enough to present at UKAPP and giving me the confidence that I needed to nail it. And thank you to Aiden for allowing me to continue to exist in this horrifically weird industry in the sense that I do and for supporting me non-stop the whole way. You mean the world to me.

Kat Henness, 2022
Posted on by — Leave a comment

Interview with NeoMetal – Lindsey Sinner

High quality jewellery is integral to the overall, long-term health of your piercing. As much as we love to show the stunning end pieces of jewellery that we get to use at Rogue, the most important part of body jewellery is the quality of the labret post or barbell that you’re using. That’s the piece that goes into your body and it is paramount that your piercer considers the metal, the polish, the length, the gauge and so many other factors to ensure that your piercing is safe.
At Rogue, we use NeoMetal titanium labrets and barbells for all of our threadless body jewellery pieces. NeoMetal has been trading since the early days of body piercing, creating jewellery for Jim Ward at The Gauntlet back in the 1990s. In 1997 the patented threadless jewellery. Innovators from the very beginning, NeoMetal have partnered with both the Body Art Alliance and Association of Professional Piercers, to continue to expand their range of jewellery and make it more accessible for the worldwide industry.
The original threadless body jewellery
Lindsey Sinner!

Gemma: NeoMetal revolutionised modern body piercing, how do you keep up with changing needs and standards in the industry?

Lindsey: When we started producing threadless jewellery, it was in partnership with a family owned business that was already ISO compliant. It was already manufacturing medical and dental implant grade titanium pieces, so we’ve been ISO compliant from the beginning. Being the small manufacturer that we were in the early days, we spent a lot of time working really closely with the APP and influential piercers like Brian Skellie, and the the original customers to find out what they want and what the industry needed. And then for the 20 years after that, we had what we call a “good problem” of trying to keep up with the demand for the product. The industry kind of grew and changed around NeoMetal. We started offering different colour gems with different size, different posts and have worked with piercers to guide what new products are needed and what’s trending.

But of course, at the forefront is always the quality and safety. And when we talk about safety, we talk about it in terms of our employees who are working on the machines, the ones who are putting the jewellery together, manufacturing the jewellery. All of that is super important, as well as the safety of the piercers who work with the jewellery and the final wearers of the jewellery. Safety has always been at the forefront of everything we do. We stay ISO compliant and we’re now ISO 9001 certified. We have a team who manages the safety of the employees working with dangerous machines in the manufacturing warehouse, where even a small mistake can can mean someone gets really hurt. Everything we do is about doing it safely.

Jay’s NeoMetal triple helix, pierced by Breo

G: How did you get started at NeoMetal?

L: I’ve worked for NeoMetal for a little over a year and a half. I was in a very toxic and unhealthy work situation prior. And I just decided one day, I absolutely can’t do this anymore. So I applied for four jobs. One of them happened to be NeoMetal. I had always been interested in body modification, I got my first tattoo when I was too young to have a tattoo. But I always had jobs where I couldn’t have any modifications on display so I had to strategically place them on my body and keep things hidden

So I was naturally drawn to that alternative world. And it’s really been John Kittell from NeoMetal that’s taken me under his wing, almost like an apprentice. He has he has taught me so much about the jewellery and about how and why we do certain things and don’t do certain things. I’ve learned so much from him in just the short time I’ve been there and I’m so thankful for the time and knowledge that he’s spent and shared with me. It’s been truly amazing.

G: That’s awesome, it’s really important to work with people that you like working with.

L: I love working with people who are so passionate about the jewellery and about making sure it’s perfect. I was recently in California at the manufacturing facility and I got to see their quality control stations. It’s amazing seeing people look at these little, tiny pieces, looking for little imperfections or inconsistencies to make sure and it’s completely safe to use and wear. It’s amazing. They’re making sure there’s no imperfections to the jewellery, no matter how tiny they are, because the amount of bacteria that can be harboured in that tiny imperfection, it is significant.

G: You’ve recently released an 18ct gold range, is this the first time NeoMetal have produced gold?

L: We’ve had a 14 carat line for a while. But with the APP developing their overall standards and their standards for gold, we thought it was an important time to move to 18 carat. It’s in high demand right now. I only wear gold jewellery, I love gold jewellery, I just like how it looks. It’s really on trend right now. And so it’s important for us to stay relevant in that way.

We are definitely working on expanding our gold offering. It’s also really important for us to maintain the NeoMetal brand. There’s a lot of gold manufacturers on the market and they make amazing jewellery and we’re finding a balance of making amazing jewellery but that is still true to NeoMetal in design. We’ve also just launched the semi-precious stone range and that’s also part of our commitment to be bring more trend focused jewellery to the market and just expand what we have available.

G: I really love your new 14ct gold Halloween collection, what’s the process behind creating a body jewellery collection?

Check out NeoMetal on Instagram

L: It’s a bit of a roundtable. We have new project initiatives and I’m involved from the sales side of the team, our marketing team is involved, John is of course involved. And then our operations team is involved because of course, we’ll get these grandiose ideas and then they’ll be like, whoa, whoa, whoa, we can’t physically do that. So it’s really a group effort and to be perfectly honest, especially with like something like Halloween, it starts with John and a post-it and pencil sketch. It’s thinking of designs that people will like, but also designs that are still NeoMetal. Like the pumpkin spice latte end. We’re kind of like the dork of that industry and it’s embracing that, you know?

We rely a lot on what on what you guys tell us you need and that sometimes comes in the form of less eccentric ends but more necessary products. For example, the length extensions of our labret posts and offering them with different size backs. That aspect of it is equally as important. Is creating longer posts super fun? No, but it is perhaps even more important because it’s something that will be used all the time. It’s integral.

G: No point having a big elaborate end like the D20 without having the right post and base size to support the jewellery.

L: Yes, exactly. So for the fun, limited collections, a lot of those are just brainstorming sessions with all of us as a group and we all decide and then prototypes get made, we look at the prototypes and we say, “okay, this one looks better than this, this will fit better than this.” And we go through that process. We have Steve Joyner on our team and he lends a lot of real experience. He really brings the piercer voice to the table.

Pride flower in a conch, pierced by Jay

G: We loved the collections for the National Centre for Transgender Equality. Does NeoMetal work with a lot of different charities?

L: We’ve done charity work for Ukraine and the devastation there, and for Hurricane Ian and those impacted in Florida. The pride collection in particular was so important to us, and very important to many people on our team. Because of the history of the community in piercing, it was especially important for us that we did it, and we did it right. And that we picked a charity that we felt was honourable.

We made sure that our entire team felt comfortable with the charity that we picked, and that we all felt comfortable with the range that we were offering. We had a lot of meetings about that to make sure that we were as inclusive as possible. It was really a lot of collaboration, a lot of hard work from a lot of people on our team and it came out beautifully. It was a really, really special collection to work on.

G: Tell us about NeoMetal Europe, how’s that going?

L: It’s still very new , but the important thing is making our jewellery accessible. That’s one thing that was ingrained into me when I first started – It doesn’t matter how big the studio is, how many piercers they have, if this is their first time ever buying high quality jewellery – NeoMetal needs to be available to them. The first step is getting it available outside of the US in a way that is easy. Unfortunately, that’s not a big help to those of you in the UK just now.

The NeoMetal Europe Team!

G: Oh! No worries, that’s absolutely not your fault *cries in Brexit*

L: Getting into Europe and making jewellery accessible is step one. With smaller studios who want to use NeoMetal, when you start talking about things like international shipping and import fees, it really does make high quality jewellery, not easily accessible. We want to continue to grow and make our jewellery available to more people. I’m excited to see what impact it will have on the larger industry. This is just the start and I can’t wait to see how it grows. And the the guys we’re working with over there, Andre and Bruno and Simon and David are just amazing. They are all pillars of the piercing community and in their respective communities.

G: Have you seen any differences in the US, UK and Europe markets?

L: A lot of the trends are pretty consistent. Initial piercings in the EU tend to be more 16 gauge and in the US it’s almost always 18 gauge. Which is interesting. And the strange thing is, with nipple jewellery, it’s a bit of the reverse. The smaller gauge barbells and the smaller ends are used in in Europe where 14g is a lot more popular. Whereas here in the States, it’s 12 gauge.

Thank you so much to Lindsey for taking the time to chat with us. And thank you to the whole NeoMetal team for being staples in the modern body piercing world. We look forward to seeing what the future holds!

You can shop our full range of NeoMetal jewellery here.

https://bodyartalliance.com/

https://brnskll.com/

https://www.neometal.com/blogs/information/the-pride-collection

https://www.instagram.com/andrenalinbodyart/?hl=en

http://www.ghirigorifamily.com/?fbclid=IwAR35osJj20LKIYwHwwKxdGWgwY58-gdUJ9JuJXX1-9I1WK_xd0A3SMaRXUU

https://www.instagram.com/bruno_bma/?hl=en

https://www.instagram.com/yabon_gorky/?hl=en

https://www.instagram.com/platinuminkpiercing/?hl=en

Posted on by — Leave a comment

An Interview with David Angeles Piercing

Based in Plymouth city centre, David owns Angeles Piercing inside Talisman Tattoo. David is one of very few people who left the piercing industry and returned full-throttle, opening up his own studio and becoming a board member of the UKAPP. David is both a UKAPP and APP member and is an incredibly talented piercer . An all round lovely person! Gemma got the chance to catch up with David post-conference to discuss his journey in the industry, UKAPP plans for the future and his sponsorship of Plymouth City Patriots Cheer Squad!

Gemma: What was your first experience body piercing?

David: I don’t remember the first piercing I saw. I remember seeing really heavily tattooed people when I was young. There was this guy that used to walk around Dawlish, I remember seeing him when I was really young and being both terrified and fascinated. I was just like, “Mom, look, it’s a bad man and I love him!”

David wears the Mini Olympus by BVLA in his septum

I think the first piercing I ever wanted was my eyebrow because it was the early two thousands and even though it was a super “chavvy” piercing at the time and everyone seemed to hate it , that made me want it. So I went and absolutely begged the woman in the local jewellers (which is a really grandiose term for what this was), it was like a little shack in Newton Abbott market where they sold and repaired watches, and for some reason they had a piercing gun. Thankfully, she did refuse to pierce my eyebrow with that and I got two lobe piercings instead. The school made me take the second one out the next day, and then I started stretching the first one. So that was like my first piercing,

I got my septum piercing pretty early on. I really wanted my lip pierced, that was like my big teenage dream because of MySpace, right? The second I finished secondary school, I ran straight to piercing shop and got my lip pierced. It was the best day.

G: While we’re in the early 2000’s, was there much of an alternative/punk scene where you grew up?

D: Yeah, there was actually. We had a really forward thinking studio called Exeter Body Piercing, which if anyone’s ever heard me talk before, they’ll know how much I love and miss that place. And because of the time, it was still non-sterile gloves and externally threaded jewellery. They were at least using titanium when everyone else was still using cheap, badly polished steel and mystery metal. They sold a lot of large gauge stuff and had all that late nineties, early two thousands crazy piercing photos on the wall. Like intersecting tunnels and stapling and all those practices that we know now very much don’t work, but was super cool to see at the time.

There was actually a reasonably vibrant piercing scene in Exeter, I don’t know about Plymouth because I’d never really spent that much time here as a kid. Exeter, at the time, was a surprisingly punk rock city as well. All the youth culture was divided into one of three groups. And one of those three groups was definitely gonna be the punk kids and the metal kids and they all had piercings, right? It had a reasonable body modification scene back then, for anyone that’s familiar with the UK Body Piercing/Modification scene back when it wasn’t illegal in the UK, Exeter had a fairly well known modification practitioner start their career down here.

G: The mods I saw growing up were all on BME

D: I can never remember how I encountered BME. I assume it was just like in the back of a magazine or something like that. But I spent every waking moment on BME because, despite the fact there was this be really vibrant scene, I was of course absolutely convinced that I was the one that was gonna do it most extreme, you know, and all this crazy stuff I saw on BME, I was definitely gonna be doing. I’m quite glad I didn’t do that.

G: What year did you get started in piercing?

D: I didn’t start until I was 26. I really wanted to be a piercer but I didn’t really know how to get into it because Exeter Body Piercing had shut down.

Cheaper chain shops started springing up and they couldn’t compete. It wasn’t necessarily just price, it was location as well. Basically, Exeter has a really steep hill and people only walk down it if they absolutely have to because they know they’re gonna have to walk back up. The chain shops just set up further up the hill and no one wanted to walk down to EBP anymore.

So, I was managing a bar and looking for a new job when someone I knew who managed a local studio offered me the opportunity to work there. They’d had two piercers but one just left and the other was going on maternity leave. To be honest, I think they would’ve taken me on at that stage if I was literally on fire. So, they took me on and taught me to pierce, and I mean, it was a low standard shop. I was doing 60, 70 piercings a day by myself, a few minutes for each client, no idea what aseptic or reasonable quality jewellery was. It was titanium because licensing said it had to be. I think I worked there about nine months because I was, not trying to be all ‘holier than thou’ but I was already very well aware that standards were low.

David hosts The Piercing Talk Show podcast

I don’t care what anyone says, piercing is tiring and it’s a big responsibility and it takes a lot out of you to continually hurt someone all day, every day. 60-70 piercings a day. I just couldn’t hack it. I couldn’t do the type of piercing they needed me to do. So I quit and decided to go to university instead.

G: Tell us about The Piercing Talk Show podcast you started

D: I just needed a project over lockdown and I’ve always really loved Ryan’s podcast, Piercing Wizard. Ryan’s podcast has had lots of British piercers on there, but I was also well aware that there were certain names that were just never gonna make it on that I wanted to talk to. When I started the podcast, I think the only person I had on who had been on Ryan’s podcast before was Charlie LeBeau, because, who doesn’t wanna talk to Charlie, right? I could have done at least another hour of that interview and never got bored. But other than that, I intentionally tried to pick people who haven’t had the opportunity to go on a podcast before.

G: What was your experience guesting at Rogue like?

D: At my first guest spot and on my first day at Rogue as well, I tried to pierce like the shop I was working at rather than just understanding that, actually I’m here so I can pierce how I pierce. Aiden is so very committed to the idea that like you can be any style of piercer and Rogue will have the tools for you. Whereas that’s so different for me at my studio, I just have to make do because I don’t work somewhere that has the possibility of reprocessing. If I can’t make it work with my fingers or a blank, I just can’t make it work, you know? So I think that was the big difference. It was quite nice every now and again to be like, “Ah, that’s really difficult. Wait! I can use haemostats!”. And the Rogue jewellery selection as well makes mine look really small. I’ve never seen that much BVLA before in one place, so yeah, that was exciting.

G: You’re very successful in Plymouth and your studio is now the sponsor for Plymouth City Patriots Basketball Club Cheer Squad!

D: I knew nothing about sports before I got into basketball. We are very much not a sports oriented family. I tried to be into football for a while, just trying to make some friends. Didn’t really work I’m not gonna lie. I’m not very good at faking enthusiasm for football. I’ve done a couple of combat sports, which I quite enjoy, but I can’t do that anymore because if I hurt my hand, I just can’t work. So we’ve never really been a sports oriented family.

But one day my son came home from school and said he wanted to go see some basketball. And we said, alright that sounds horrible but we’ll take you. And we really enjoyed it! Me and me and my wife got right into it. And their cheer squad have really struggled to find sponsorship, which I find baffling because none of the players or the team have had that problem. From a brand psychology point of view, players have good days, but they also have really bad days. But the cheer squad? Only good feelings! So that was like a no brainer to me. We are sponsoring Plymouth City Patriots Cheer Squad this year, which is cool.

G: Tell us about the journey to starting Angeles Piercing

D: I work out of Talisman Tattoo in Plymouth, I rent a room downstairs and my studio is pretty self-contained.

When I left the first studio I worked at, I really did truly intend not to go back to piercing. I thought that place was all there was, and I didn’t wanna find out anything else about the industry. But then a friend of mine who ran a studio, asked if I wanted to work there. I didn’t know if I really wanted to do piercing again but I just agreed to do it for a few months until they found a new piercer. In that time, I had a client come in wanting a set of Dahlia piercings. I’d never done them before and from everything I knew about piercing – it didn’t seem very safe to just ‘give it a go’.

So I reached out to Nick Pinch and asked if he’d show me how to do these piercing if I brought the client along and he agreed. The guy didn’t have the right anatomy for them, but instead, he ended up buying an Industrial Strength prium and a big amethyst cabochon. And I was blown away. I’d never seen jewellery like that before. Pinchy showed me his Statim and stuff like that and I was like, “Oh my god, these things are all incredible.” So a combination of speaking with Rae from Ethereal Aesthetics, Ian from Holdfast Body and Pinchy convinced me to go to the UKAPP conference that year. And I came back from with all these incredible ideas and properly got fired from the studio I was at.

So I went home and I was really, really broken and full credit to my wife because I don’t know that I’d still be piercing now if it wasn’t for her. She was like “look, if you want to carry on piercing then you’ve got basically everything you need except the Statim. So let’s find the money for the Statim and you can have some feelings about this horrible thing later, but right now let’s just find you another job”. We went into Plymouth city centre and I got offers from a couple of studios that I wasn’t really sure about.

Steph and David at their wedding

And then I walked into Talisman. I knew I needed to work there. The aesthetic was just so pretty and it was just such a peaceful space. The studio owners asked me to come in for a chat and I’d already had such a good feeling about it that I’d actually turned down the other two offers. I was so prepared to work at Talisman . I thought I was being interviewed so I wore a fucking suit to meet them. Took a whole bag of like jewellery with me that I’d picked up from conference that I wanted to show them. And they were just lovely. I told them that I wanted to be a UKAPP member and an APP member and they asked what I needed to do that. Looking at the space, it just needed a sink and the ability to make the desk non-porous. The studio owners were really supportive in helping me achieve that.

I started in Talisman in November, 2019. And without blowing my own trumpet, I have the highest Environmental Health score. I was elected to the UKAPP board within about nine months of being part of the organisation. I think obviously Covid had a lot to with that because, I often get quite a lot of congratulations for all the stuff I tried to do during covid. And actually I was purely doing it because I knew that if I didn’t, I was gonna get so depressed I might never leave the sofa again.

When the pandemic started, Aiden had said everyone needs to do something. And I was like, right, I’m gonna do something. I’m gonna do something and I’m gonna do it right now. Because otherwise I’m gonna cry and I’m gonna never stop crying. So we did few online things for piercers over Covid. And then when the next board election came up, I got nominated and I thought, I’ll accept the nomination because no one’s gonna vote for me anyway. And then I got like elected and I was like, okay now I’ve gotta be on the board

Talisman Tattoo, Plymouth

It’s been quite cool. I think we’ve done some cool stuff.

G: Why did you want to join the UKAPP?

D: I discovered the UKAPP around about the same time I met Nick. Me and Rae were very much baby pierces at that point and were constantly talking about where we wanted our careers to go. We both wanted to be UKAPP and APP members. To be honest, it was kind of mostly self-interested. It seemed like there was this group of piercers who had really demonstrated that they were hitting these standards. I just wanted to be a part of that, I wanted to show that I was as good as it was possible to be at what I did.

Especially after Lola and Sean had all the success that they did over the FGM issue, I think I definitely started seeing that this is an organisation which doesn’t just prompt piercers to be better, but also wanted what was happening to us to be better as well. And actually. maybe we could make some change. I put together my UKAPP application in July 2019 and after a few minor changes it was accepted in December, 2019. I was out Christmas shopping when I got the email, I was in a comic book shop buying Spiderman comics for my son and I did a little happy dance. It was really good.

The UKAPP is group of piercers who are meeting a certain hygiene standard and I know it’s a cliche but I am proud to be a part of the organisation and I’m proud that I’ve managed to consistently hit that standard.

UKAPP members at conference, 2022

G: Congrats on your position on the board! What are the UKAPP currently working on?

D: We’re going to be updating minimum standards. They had, in my mind, become just a little bit convoluted and reading the current standards was a bit difficult. So we want to update them, make them make a little bit more sense and easier to understand. We’ve added and clarified a few as well.

In 2023, we are adding sterile gloves as a strong suggestion. We are adding aseptic technique as a strong suggestion. In 2024, that will become an actual minimum standard and if you don’t want to use sterile gloves, you just have to let us know how you’re going to achieve an aseptic technique without the use of sterile gloves.

We will be updating jewellery standards to apply to non-healed piercings, which they already did but I think there was some confusion around that. You have to use something that meets the minimum jewellery standards for your initial piercing, but do you have to use it for downsized? Do you have to use it for troubleshooting? We are just clarifying that yes, unless it is a properly healed piercing, you need to be using jewellery that meets the minimum standard. And although this is not becoming a minimum standard, it is purely becoming a suggestion same as the use of a HEPA filter, in the sense that we think it’s a good and sensible idea, but we also recognise that it’s not possible for every studio. We’re going to suggest that jewellery transfer tools or anything that actually transverses a wound as you’re performing a piercing, should be single use and should not be reprocessed.

We’re also launching a journal! There was a lot of feedback that people weren’t being kept, up to date. The journal is our response to that, and if anyone has ever read The Point which is put out by the APP, it’s gonna be something similar to that.

We’re also going to take a run at creating a healed piercing standard because it’s obviously been something that nearly every UKAPP and APP board have tried and just never been successful. So we kind of feel like, it’s our turn. I feel like we all know what we mean when we talk about jewellery that’s suitable for healed piercing. We are not talking about sticking an externally threaded piece of steel or piece of non verified metal into someone’s healed piercing. That’s not what we mean. We are just trying to find a way that we can say it should meet these standards unless it’s for weights or plugs or something like that. But we just need to find a way to word that that actually works for the industry as a whole. I’m quietly confident in that one.

We’re also just continuing to work with Environmental Health Officers. I know it looks slow to an outside observer, and I absolutely understand why it looks slow. The thing is, when you talk about making change to the UK piercing industry, there is no central legislation which governs piercing at all. It’s all local and the reason that’s a problem is it means that you can’t make changes all at once. They have to make changes council by council and in fact, to be able to make centralised changes, you wouldn’t just have to have representatives of the body piercing industry, you would have to start arguing that many powers that have been devolved from Westminster to local government are then taken back to Westminster.

So it’s not just piercing, but also tattoo, hair, food hygiene, things like this. When you’re making change at a local council level, first off, you have to convincingly make the argument that the change you’re asking for is essential to public health. After you convince them of that, they then have to check whether it’s going to place “an undue burden on local business”. You then have to win that argument with one council, which is an enormous undertaking in itself. There are 333 councils in the UK and if one of them turns you back, then that suddenly sets a precedent that other local councils can knock it back as well.

I appreciate why it looks slow to people on the outside and it’s because it is. It is heartbreakingly, painfully slow to make the changes that we want to make for the UK piercing industry.

We did have a few things last year that have given us some hope, and I’m hoping that we can expand on this year. We might be able to approach things in a slightly different way without having to make new legislative change, but work within what already exists without introducing bylaws. So if that comes off, I’ll be thrilled.

G: What’s in the future for Angeles Piercing?

D: For the time being, I’m very happy coasting. I’ve got all the UKAPP board stuff and I’ve just started working with Infinite Body Jewellery to bring their jewellery to the UK. I’m not gonna lie, my wife Steph has done an enormous amount of the Infinite stuff because it’s her company to. But even so, I am still snowed under and the idea of expanding or doing anything big with the studio at the minute is a little way off.

I’ve reached a point in my jewellery collection where actually it’s not really fitting in the cabinet anymore. It’s looking a bit crowded. But I don’t have the space to add a second cabinet right now. Sometime in the future I think I would like to start my own studio. I would probably continue to work in Talisman and I would start a second studio maybe elsewhere. There’s no firm plans really, at the minute we’ve got a lot else on.

Infinite Body UK

I do offer free consultancy services at this stage in my career, to help piercers get out of studios that they’re not happy in and set up on their own. And it’s something that I’d like to do as a job eventually, but I wouldn’t know how that would work in a way that I could like effectively make money from the people I want to make money from, but not take money from people who I think need the help. Rhianna’s UKAPP role as membership liaison is very much like, I would struggle to consider it anything other than free consultancy. Because Rhianna is really, genuinely terrific at their role in helping people become members. People don’t necessarily know that they can just reach out to Rhianna in an email and we’ll discuss anything. Does this meet standard? Does that not meet standard? And personally, I really like creative ways to meet UKAPP standards. I’m not saying that we’re gonna like bend rules, but I do like seeing people find creative ways to deal with problems that might arise.

For example, Rae at Ethereal Aesthetics, the way that they have set up their studio to ensure that it’s meeting those minimum standards or the minimum standards that they’ve set for them for themselves based on UK standards, it’s incredible. Like, it’s really incredible. When I first saw that building, I though there is no way that is ever gonna be where it is now. But they’ve done it!

It shows you don’t have to be like those huge studios that have the opportunity to just tear walls up and down at whim to be able to be members. My own studio is much the same, I’ve got maybe 20 square meters of floor space. It’s just tiny. But when I set up Angeles Piercing, one of my goals of becoming a UKAPP member was that I wanted to show that you didn’t need to be a really high volume studio to meet those standards. I think I’ve demonstrated that well.

G: Kat asks – if you could change one thing about your studio design, what would it be?

D: A better jewellery display space because I’ve literally got one jewellery cabinet in quite possibly the most inconvenient location ever. It’s the only place I could put it that met standard and I hate it because it’s in quite a closed away location. So yeah, a better jewellery display space would be what I would change about my studio.

G: Jay wants to know – What is your Gregg’s order?

D: Oh, it’s two vegan sausage rolls and a bottle of Coke. Nice and simple. Have you been to Original Pasty House? It might just be a Devon thing. Their vegan sausage rolls are absolutely boss, like definitely the best ones on the market.

https://www.facebook.com/angelespiercing

https://www.instagram.com/talisman.tattoo/?hl=en

https://www.rhiannajonespiercing.com/

https://www.instagram.com/rhiannajonespiercing/?hl=en

https://www.facebook.com/thegeekypiercer/

https://www.instagram.com/geekypiercer/

https://www.instagram.com/_ethereal_aesthetics/

http://etherealaestheticspiercing.com/

https://www.voodoobodypiercing.com/

https://www.instagram.com/voodoopinchy/

https://www.instagram.com/piercingsbyseanpowell/?hl=en

https://www.precisionbodyarts.com/podcast

https://www.precisionbodyarts.com/

https://www.instagram.com/ryanpba/?hl=en

https://www.bme.com/

https://www.ukapp.org.uk/

https://safepiercing.org/

Posted on by — 1 Comment

Conference Time!

Mirror, mirror on the ceiling

September has been a very busy month. The Rogues were very privileged to attend conferences in both Essen, Germany and Manchester, UK! Veteran conference attendees Aiden and Breo flew out to the annual BMXNet conference held in Essen to learn more about the fascinating world of body modifications, including suspension demonstrations and piercing technique workshops.

Almost as soon as they arrived back, the whole team drove to Manchester for the UKAPP conference. First time attendees, Jay, Kat and Gemma finished the Saturday shift and headed out – notebooks at the ready! A hectic month requires plenty of time to reflect, absorb and process and with so much learnt and so many new experiences shared, the team have taken a moment to jot down some thoughts about September’s conference season.

Jay


My first time away for a UKAPP conference was absolutely crazy, but in the best way imaginable! When we first arrived on Saturday night, I was super nervous and tired from a busy day at the studio, followed immediately by the 2.5 hour drive to Manchester. So I called it a night early and was tucked up in bed by 11pm (after a quick trip to Spar for some snacks)!

And then, it was Sunday morning! We got up, took Aiden’s dogs for a walk and headed to the venue for registration. I kicked off my first day with an amazing class by Edu Fernandez about the dark side of diamonds! I went off to Greggs, and this is where I started talking to people and making some friends. It really helped my confidence, and from there I introduced myself to as many people as possible!
The afternoon was kickstarted with another amazing class from Suzanne Wise, educating us all about health considerations with piercings – I got so many notes! This was followed by THE Paul King, talking to us about the history of pierced women in porn. This was a huge fan girl moment for me and I stayed behind afterwards to ask some questions! I nearly died when he shook my hand!

Aiden, Jay and Paul King


I couldn’t have asked for a better first start to the conference, which then got even better in the evening! After a lovely meal (thank you Aiden :)) we headed towards the Stiletto after party, where I got to talk to a few more piercers! And, HUGE FANGIRL MOMENT, I got to take a photo with AIDEN AND PAUL KING, on stage!! I was weak at the knees!
Day two, the excitement had definitely cooled down a little bit, however I got to do some more amazing classes! Huge thank you to Nahuel Burgos, Paul King, and Jess Sellars for their very informative classes.


And then before I knew it, it was already the final day! Started it off right with a trip to Starbucks and a great introduction to high-end jewellery class from Alex Wilkins! The afternoon was swiftly followed by a super educational class by the wonderful Helen Houghton, all about those lumps and bumps! And then we ended the day with another history lesson by Paul King, all about The Incredible Til of Cardiff! Afterwards, I got to talk a little more to him regarding how to start my own research projects and even got to give him some stickers! And that was it!
My highlights were definitely meeting Paul King, and making some incredible new piercer friends, as well as collecting loads of stickers! Huge shoutout to Lindsey at Neometal, and Damien at Neilmed! And the guys from People’s Jewelry! You were all so amazing, and lovely! I really wish I’d had more time to properly speak to everyone, but that’s what next year is for right?

Breo

It was my third time attending the BMXnet conference, my last one was back in 2016. There are a lot of friends that I only can see when meet up at this conference, so it was awesome to catch up with them after many years. It’s a huge event (this year we were around 470 participants).

The classes are more participative than other conferences, which is nice and the venue is just spectacular. We had free buffet (eat as much as you like), with plenty of vegan options. Classes start from 9am up to 8pm (around 2 hours each class), and with breaks in between so you can attend as many as you want. People come from all over the world to this annual gathering (we had a piercer that came all the way from Mumbai!). We met a lot of new faces indeed.

BMXNET 2022

Jewellery vendors were distributed over 2 floors (the building has 6 floors), because there was A LOT OF JEWELLERY BRANDS selling! We got a few treats for ourselves, loved ones and friends. I only have good memories from this conference, it’s one of my favourites by far.

Now onto UKAPP, what to say… playing at home is always awesome. This year was very special to me, because not only did I have my partner in crime assisting as a vendor (Claudia of Inari) but the whole Rogue team was there. It was the first time for Gemma, Jay and Kat (just the first of many to come), with a special mention to Kat, who attended as speaker. Words cannot tell how proud I was seeing them talking about wound healing dynamics. Thorough and technical, just the way we like it. 

Claudia & Breo at UKAPP

Conference was at the Radisson Hotel, which is located in central Manchester. It’s smaller than BMXNet, but cosier. It was incredibly awesome seeing how the conference grew through the years, despite a global pandemic. There is nothing bad to say about the UKAPP Conference, maybe that it is just 3 days long. 3 days that, if you blink, you definitely will miss something! Usually there is so much going on at the same time at conferences, that it is hard to do everything you planned, but the UKAPP Conference is one of those that is structured in a way that  all the classes don’t overlap with other activities on the schedule, which is great.

Gemma

Like many people, I’ve struggled with social anxiety for over a decade and attending my first large conference was a really big achievement both professionally and personally. I cannot thank everyone enough for being so supportive and understanding. It’s been years since I’ve visited Manchester and it was great to return to the city (under wildly different circumstances).

Filling our tummies!

Every class I attended was eye opening. From learning how to better identify the causes and preventions for piercing lumps and bumps thanks to Helen, seeing different techniques and approaches to nostril piercings from Stray, all the way through the three history classes presented by Paul King – every class I attended was full of fascinating information and helpful knowledge that I can’t wait to bring to my piercing. I particularly enjoyed Nahuel’s class on piercing before the 20th century and can’t wait to do some further reading on our worldwide history!

I met so many amazing people, from all over the world and it was great to hear their stories, opinions and accents. I’ve missed the North! It was overwhelming at first to meet so many industry professionals that I have admired, some from even before I picked up a needle. Everyone who took the time to chat with me was so lovely and I’m very grateful to work in an industry with such interesting people. I really loved spending time with Andre (@andrenalinbodyart) and Loreia (@unknownpleasurespiercing) and I can’t wait to see you both again soon (BMXNET 2023?).

Dusk Body Jewellery has made some absolutely breathtaking pieces. Purchase this rose-cut Peridot piece here!

Kat

This year was my first year attending the UKAPP conference. Although we were members last year, I was unable to attend due to covid restrictions so it was super exciting to be able to go this year! Although I was pretty nervous, I was also incredibly thrilled to be teaching a class this year. My class was ‘Immunology and Wound Healing Dynamics,’ which went down very well! The class actually topped out in attendance so I hope to be able to offer it again next year so that more people can attend that want to learn about science and piercing.

Kat’s class was jam packed!

Aside from being a speaker, I also had the pleasure of being the chief purchaser of jewellery from the extensive jewellery expo! We have new stock from Dusk Body Jewellery, Sebastienne Jewellery, Industrial Strength and Anatometal which is all available in store and on the webstore as well. I really hope you all like what I’ve chosen! The classes were also awesome this year. I made a point to attend as many as my schedule would allow, so I attended classes covering Professional Boundaries (David Angeles), Jewellery Handling and Manipulation (Stray and Aiden Johnson), Better Basics (Stray Johnson and David Angeles), Initial Jewellery Standards (Brian Skellie), Ethical Gold (Edu Fernandez), and a history of the Incredible Till of Cardiff (Paul King).

Each class was incredibly valuable in their own right – I couldn’t pick a favourite! It was insightful to meet some of the names I had until now only seen and talked to over the internet. Brian Skellie was just as calm, well-spoken and intelligent as he is online! It was also very cool to meet some fellow members of the industry and get talking. Thank you to everyone who came up and said hi! My favourite moment was definitely the Themed Ball, where David Angeles attended dressed as a mermaid – David Clam-geles. I am very proud of that pun, just so you know!

New jewellery from Sebastienne! Purchase this exact piece here!

Aiden

Conference season came and went in a blur this year. Breo and myself headed to BMXNet first, where we got to spend time with some old friends as well as make some new friends. We took classes and waxed lyrical into the night with our European and international peers and it felt like returning home after all the lockdowns. Before we knew it we were making our way back to the UK for a quick intermission.

Our boys at breakfast!

I did my CBT and motorbike theory tests (passed both!) and then it was time to pack the car and head to UKAPP. I couldn’t be more proud of how the Rogues handled themselves this year. Breo and myself are veteran conference attendees but the rest of the team were first timers. I was the AV volunteer for UKAPP conference again this year so I was generally busy setting up classes and making the tech work but every time I saw a Rogue, they were asking questions and introducing themselves to people as well as asking for interviews (well done Gemma!). Seeing Jay become a fan girl and go up on stage to get a photo with Paul King is one of my top two highlights of UKAPP. The other would be seeing Kat teach their first class and blow the minds of piercers. I was nervous taking such a large team but they all did perfectly and I look forward to them all returning next year!

Thank you!

To all the volunteers, vendors, board members and attendees at both BMXnet and UKAPP conference this year for making it a great experience for everyone. And thank you to our clients and industry peers, as without all of your support we wouldn’t have the opportunity to travel, learn and continue providing high quality and high standard professional piercing in the heart of Nottinghamshire. It means the absolute world to us to be able to continue to be at the forefront of safe piercing practices in the UK and across the world. See you all again next year!