For Lovers

Lamar is a muse for the ages, a lens through which we can explore the love within both our hearts and others'.

Check out the video and photos below.

Culture

NYFW's Best Party

Culture

A Tattoo, An Interview

September 11, 2025

Every tattoo from Your Story, By Me starts with a conversation, an avenue to discover a human connection and mutual understanding before the tattooing can begin. Born in Belarus but living a nomadic life across the globe, Arnest Makhin (Your Story, By Me) has done over 800 interviews and thousands of tattoos with clients over 28 different countries worldwide. Many of these interviews can be found at yourstoryby.me and are candid, dark and even deeply uncomfortable at times but they investigate such a raw part of our humanity. This is what makes Makhin's art so compelling, meaningful and important; they put the tattoos into perspective and show how they are more than simply minimalist tattoos and have become powerful symbols of lives lived with perseverance, emotion and hardship. With varied themes from health to sexuality, they all bring insight into the complexities of the human condition.

Photos courtesy of Your Story, By Me
Text and Interview by JohnOswald Crichton

Tattooing is not an art form easily fallen into so why express your art in this way?

I’d just landed in Paris, tongue-tied in English, mute in French, kicked off a construction site after three months. With journalism in my past, starting out in painting or photography (if that’s what you mean by “easily fallen into”) didn’t feel like it would bring in money right away. I was literally hungry. I tried DJing, even teaching chess, but only tattooing showed up as the way forward. Forty bucks a piece. No gun, no fancy setup, not even stencil paper. So I did just freehand, stick and poke. That’s how it began, and that’s still how I work.

What do you remember about the first tattoo you ever gave someone?

Elizabeth Hilfiger’s arm, that was the first. I still have the photo from that night: she’s sitting between my knees, cigarette hanging from her mouth. I tattooed the word “friend,” in Russian. Yeah, that was a long night, and somewhere in the crowd the muse of John Galliano drifted in. I barely noticed her—married then, playing chess, passing the joint around. Strange how time folds back: she would later become my lover, then my partner, and now something else again.

It must be strange to be the interviewee for once, what initially inspired you to do interviews alongside your tattoos?

My first passion was always writing, and after a while I started to miss it. Tattooing had taken over my days, my nights, my whole orbit, and it felt natural to write about it. At first it was just fragments, little sketches, short stories. But then I realised I want more.

For the interviews, often your clients share very dark and painful truths with you, as your process is so intimate, do you find this has affected you emotionally?

Yes. It’s changed me. It’s made me more compassionate. And compassion isn’t about sinking into someone else’s pain, it’s about being present, listening without judgment, and wishing them well.

Is it a frequent occurrence that clients keep in touch after being tattooed?

No, not often. And it’s not because I don’t want to, it’s just that I’m always on the move. That said, a few clients have become real friends.

Have many of your clients returned for a second tattoo? If so how has this experience differed from their first tattoo?

Maybe a dozen or two. What I find most interesting is when someone comes back for a second interview, saying so much in their life has shifted that they want to mark it with another tattoo. And then there’s this one man in Paris. Every time I’m there, he shows up for another line. Just a single line. By now, he’s got twelve.

What is your personal experience with your own tattoos? Have they been driven by emotions like the tattoos you create?

My first tattoo was a text: I’m hurt, and lonely, and sad, but I’m happy and glad. It caught the ambiguity of our nature. Later I discovered suprematism, and inspired by how simple shapes could stir emotion I made a big abstract piece. That one turned out to be my least favorite, maybe because it was “too abstract.” That’s when I realized I wanted my tattoos to be driven not just by emotions, but by experiences—discoveries, achievements, heartbreaks.

Do you have a favourite tattoo on yourself and what was the story behind it?

I have too many to choose just one, but the last one feels beautiful to me—“Not knowing is most intimate,” written in kanji. It’s a Zen koan I came across through Henry Shukman. It points to not knowing as a fruitful state, the release of preconceptions, assumptions, the fixed stories we tell ourselves about who we are.

Finally, is there any particular interview and tattooing experience that has stood out to you the most in the over 800 you have done to date? If so, why is this?

I’ll allow myself not to answer this question directly, but to share what I’ve discovered. Out of all the interviews, I realized people don’t dream big. They want to travel the world, build a house or a family, be seen, be accepted, find safety, stability, joy. All beautiful, but almost no one has ever told me they dream of changing the world. No one has said, I want to be so rich I can end famine in Sudan, Gaza, or Haiti. No one has said, I want enough power to stop fossil fuel giants or to protect what’s left of wild nature.

It feels like people don’t dream it because they’ve already decided it’s impossible. And that, to me, is troubling, even hopeless at times. Because almost everyone admits that happiness for all beings would be good, yet most of us only concern ourselves with the happiness of our little circle.

Culture

Paige Elkington x Rachel Matthews

RACHEL MATTHEWS

Where do you picture this conversation taking place — a hotel lobby, a friend’s floor, or somewhere else?

PAIGE ELKINGTON

Well, sitting on the floor is my baseline...natural posture, so that's not very exciting for me. I'd pick a hotel lobby. That's sexy. But, right now, I'm actually on my floor surrounded by moving boxes because I'm moving to New York next week.

I'm in Mexico City on set right now, but I'm envisioning us in the Huntington Gardens' bonsai garden…something outside, in the grass.

Perfect. On the grass it is.

How did we first meet?

We ran in the same LA circles for years, but didn’t get close until later — when we did, it was instant best friendship. We always joke we’re the same person, even down to both having a prolapsed mitral valve.

I remember seeing you outside La Poubelle in 2016 and thinking, who is this stunning, iconic woman? I need to be friends with her.

I didn't know this!

Then I was like, she's so hot, funny, smart. Honestly, now that I'm telling you this story, I feel like I pulled a full Ingrid Goes West.

This was your big plan all along.

I've been playing the long game, dude. Imagine I follow you to New York City.

When did we actually get each other?

The Renaissance Faire was the real turning point.

Oh, yes! Jousting, throwing axes. That was our first moment.

If the internet is a stage, what role are you playing?

I’d say I’m half big sister, doling out advice, half performer…jester.

You’re very much like a modern Carrie Bradshaw. With your Substack. But then, yes, you also perform and direct, and make people laugh.

When did we actually get each other?

Oh, yes! Jousting, throwing axes. That was our first moment.

If our friendship had a mood board, what's on it?

Lots of photos of land. You and I are always sending each other houses with land. We're obsessed with acreage.

Obsessed with acreage. All we do is send each other Zillow properties. And making films and TV shows.

What's the best smell in the world?

Campfire. And then Jasmine.

hat's what I was gonna say! Jasmine! Best smell in the world. That's one of the things I will miss about LA.

What's a role, real or imagined, we'd cast ourselves in together?

My dream would be for us to play co-workers in a corporate office comedy à la Broadcast News. Except women in their 30s.

I would love it if we were to redo Step Brothers...Step Sisters.

What do you think the other one will be doing in 20 years?

In 20 years, your production company will have churned out tons of amazing shows and movies. You’ll have kids and be volunteering at church.

Oh my God, I love that. For you, I’m seeing Pulitzers, bestselling books, films, and TV shows. And you’ll be married to the love of your life, three kids, a farmhouse upstate, and an apartment in the city. And our kids and husbands will be best friends.

All we do is send each other Zillow properties.

If this conversation is a time capsule, what’s the one thing you want people to remember about you right now?

My ability to try to help people be their best selves. Or my writing.

My loyalty. I'm very selective about the people I keep in my life, and I would go to hell and back for them. I would hope they remember that.

What’s in and out?

In: Gray hair. Out: Scaffolding.

In: Shoestring filmmaking, Substack. Out: Waymos. We’re not giving our money to those soulless robot cars.

Sign up for our newsletter

For Lovers

Recommended articles

On Deck: Oona Roche

Fun City Tattoo x Chico LES

Pete Ohs Makes You Forget Your Boyfriend, and That Charli xcx is a Popstar

NYFW's Best Party

Recommended articles

Converse Puts the Chuck Taylor to Work

Blank Street: The Sleeve

Adomako Aman's Moment of "PEACE"

A Tattoo, An Interview

Recommended articles

Peluca

The Exquisite Experience of a Color: Glenn Ligon

Mayday at the Moxy Hotel

Paige Elkington x Rachel Matthews

Recommended articles

District Vision: Integrating Community Into a Retail Environment

TheArsenale State of Mind

How Are You Doing?

Confirm your age