A woman lies on a bed showing a black floral damask tattoo on her back styled as a laced corset, with a floral vine tattoo on her upper arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Black damask corset tattoo on a back and arm

Back · Black and grey · Photo

A woman lies face down on a pale bed with her face turned away from the camera. Black floral damask scrollwork on her back is shaped into a corset with a laced ribbon and bow at the waist, and a smaller floral vine runs across her upper arm. The fine black linework and solid black areas sit against soft cream and lilac bedding in a warm, low-contrast photograph.

Back Upper arm Corset Floral Scrollwork Lace Ribbon Bow Vine

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mrs Abernethy had the pattern book open on the cutting table before the gaslight was lit, and Ada knew from the set of her mouth that the Harrowgate order was going wrong again. "Damask, not paisley," she said, tapping a sketch of a scrolled leaf. "Black on cream, running down the spine like a ledger line. Mrs Vane wants her husband to see the back of the dress and feel he has been told something."

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Ada worked the silk through her fingers until it gave, then chalked the seam where the boning would sit. The stay pattern had been copied three times from a single drawing, and each copy had lost a little of the vine that wound round the shoulder. She stitched the missing tendrils back in by hand, slowly, while the workroom emptied around her and the bell from St Michael's struck six. Mrs Vane's maid came for the fitting at seven and stood in the doorway holding a lamp she did not need.

The ribbon was the difficult part. Black silk, cut on the bias so it would lie flat over the lacing, and tied at the waist in a bow with two long tails that had to fall exactly the same length or the whole thing looked drunk. Ada knotted it three times on the dummy before she was satisfied, then sat back on her stool and listened to the carriage wheels going over the cobbles outside.

When the dress went out in the morning, Mrs Abernethy checked the seams, nodded once, then turned the garment over and frowned. "You've put the vine on the wrong side," she said. Ada looked. It was right on the back, the side the one person who mattered would see across a crowded room. "Good," said Mrs Abernethy, and went back to her ledger without another word.