Tattoo artist Bruno Levy launches fashion brand Cigarettes

Bruno Levy leverages his tattoo career for his first fashion label.

Levy, who also works as a multidisciplinary and tattoo artist at Bandit Studio in Brooklyn, releases his first brand of mode, called Cigarettes by Bruno Levy, on Tuesday. The brand marks Levy's first solo venture into the fashion world after working with brands like Hermès, Adidas, Cole Haan and others on previous projects.

"I wanted to develop different mediums," Levy said of the line's launch. "I've had a number of different careers in my life. In some ways, I feel like [cigarettes] are a way for me to incorporate a lot of things that I was interested in."

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Cigarettes offers cardigans, tees, dress shirts, pants and accessories designed in a graphic aesthetic and grungy. Levy explained that cardigans, available in a wide range of colors, are the brand's flagship product.

He was inspired by his stay in Japan for the style, focusing specifically on jackets Japanese. He saw similarities between his tattoo work and the patchwork details of bomber jackets and wanted to incorporate them into his brand's cardigans.

"There are many tattoo designs and placements in the way they were embroidered" , he explained. "I'm mainly a tattoo artist. The last eight years of my life focused on tattooing and I saw [the jackets] as almost an extension of my tattooing where the placement and scale and how they read on the clothes was very similar to the way a tattoo would read. on the body."

A Bruno Levy Cigarettes look.

It was also important for Levy to create a genderless clothing line to provide options for a clientele wider, the one in which he explained that he fell.

"Much of the collection I was trying to do something that everyone would want to wear ," he said. "It wouldn't be limited to menswear or womenswear because I think for me, as a male consumer, everything is either really expressive or toned down and it's hard for me to find something that's at the environment where I can express myself, but it's not completely neutral.

Levy produces the line to order to minimize waste and reduce the amount of excess merchandise. The line's T-shirts have previously been produced in small quantities. The brand is available on its website, and styles range from $60 for a skull-themed candle to $540 for dress shirts.

The tattoo artist said he is currently working on his next collection, which he hopes will be released in June . As he is committed to minimizing waste, Levy hopes to work more with vintage and unsold materials for future collections.