STAMP OF APPROVAL: Shinola today makes a splash in the downtown Los Angeles Arts District ahead of the store’s official construction start.
Tattoo artist Scott Campbell officially debuts his Whole Glory installation on the West Coast, following its launch last year in New York at Milk Studios. At the center of the three-day installation in a portion of the 4,000-square-foot space that will be Shinola’s future home in the Arts District is a raffle in which winners receive a free tattoo immediately onsite from Campbell himself. The catch? Winners blindly stick their arms through a hole in a picket-fence construct running across the back half of the space and get inked not having met Campbell or discussed the design with him prior, and thus becoming an installation themselves in the process.
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“Scott’s one of those supercreative, incredible partners of ours who wanted to host a cool event … and so just pulled it together here and given the fact that Scott’s going to have a studio in the space when we open the store we just thought it’d be fun to activate the space [and] get people talking about what’s going to happen down here,” president Jacques Panis told WWD at the private opening event Thursday.
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Asked if Panis would enter the raffle, he held up his ticket, revealing, “I’m number 180,” after having already been tattooed by Campbell about a year ago with Shinola’s lightning bolt — a symbol, he said, of the company’s commitment to quality.
Whole Glory remains open through Sunday, during which time a total of 18 tattoos will be raffled.
It’s a fitting event for the space with Campbell’s Saved Tattoo expected to open a Los Angeles outpost within Shinola’s downtown store when it opens in the fall, along with New York restaurant The Smile.
The store is located at 825 East Third Street in a popular block of the district that also includes Poketo and Apolis, along with eateries such as Wurstkuche, Guerilla Tacos and Alchemy Works.