I Got a Made-to-Fade Tattoo That Never Faded
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If someone said there was a tattoo that felt and looked real, but would fade within nine to 15 months, would you try it? I did. In January of 2022, I went to a now-shuttered Brooklyn studio, intending to get a “made-to-fade” tattoo. The founder of Ephemeral Tattoo, Joshua Sakhai, told me a heartwarming story about his intention to make truly temporary body art so that he could be buried in a Jewish cemetery (tattoos are generally forbidden in Jewish culture). A receptionist showed me pictures of the fading process, and I oohed and ahhed at the before and after photos, depicting how the ink would start out jet black and then fade to nothing. I was sold.
Luckily, I have no plans to go to a bathing house in Japan, or display my arm in one of the many countries where tattoos are banned anytime soon, because my Ephemeral tattoo is, er, not very ephemeral. My “temporary” tattoo is on my left bicep—a line-drawn rose that I wanted to look like wisps of smoke, to pay homage to its alleged impermanence. Three years and two months later, the lines are still there, though the black has faded to the same shade of blue as the veins in my wrists.
Similar to the ink itself, the brand’s claims continue to morph. Ephemeral Tattoo’s official stance was that an initial fade would occur from nine to 15 months. Then as of February of 2023, CEO Jeff Liu, updated consumers that it would take three years. But as of around 1,150 days, my tattoo is still very visible. I’m also not the only one who’s experienced an unephemeral Emphemeral tattoo. Reddit’s r/EphemeralTattoos has nearly 700 active members and is full of posts from people who have passed the three-year mark, still have visible ink, and share my same frustrations. “I got my Ephemeral tattoo and it’s still going strong,” one member says. “Because the tattoo was advertised as temporary, I put much less thought into the drafting,” says another. Among the people who have tried this “temporary” ink are beauty editors like me, who are always game to try new treatments in the name of a good story. The results have been a mixed bag.
Some like Jennifer Sullivan, host of the Fat Mascara podcast and beauty columnist for The Cut, were skeptical from the beginning. Sullivan got an Ephemeral tattoo of a mandala on her ankle in July of 2021. Three years and seven months later, her tattoo is still visible, but she had always assumed that there was a chance it would be permanent. “Certain areas of it have almost completely gone away, and other areas haven’t at all,” she says. Others magically got the best case scenario, like Ama Kwarteng, writer and former beauty director at Coveteur. She says that while the Ephemeral tattoo she got on her hip took longer to fade than she expected, it did, in fact, vanish after three years. Kwarteng has 19 permanent tattoos, and is very familiar with the process.
According to Liu, Ephemeral’s technology is supposed to mimic dental sutures that dissolve in the mouth. “The moment that [these polymers] are exposed to water, they start to naturally degrade,” he says. Dhaval G. Bhanusali, MD, a dermatologist and Ephemeral consultant, has some theories on why some tattoos have faded and others have stayed— it’s all about placement, particularly if your ink is on your arms or legs. “Extremities tend to have a slower healing process,” he says. “When you scrape a knee, it can look scraped for a long period of time, because there’s very little blood flow to that area.” He also says there’s no meaningful way to boost blood flow to those areas, as they’re further from your heart.
This helps explain why Sullivan and my tattoos haven’t faded, while Kwarteng’s, on her hip, has. Bhanusali says that in general, some people are also just slower healers. “Sometimes you’re at the mercy of the human body,” says Bhanusali.
Fellow Ephemeral tattoo users are also at the mercy of the brand's claims. In 2023, the brand released a statement posted to Reddit updating their fade time based on “active customer fade monitoring.” In the statement, Ephemeral said that after conversations with their customers, one of their takeaways was that “a generalized fade time for a majority of cases without specifying edge cases can cause customer confusion and disappointment.” “Our education has improved substantially since our initial launch,” says Liu. “Admittedly, with hindsight, we have a much deeper understanding of variability.” The brand promises that all tattoos will fade 100 percent.
Before Ephemeral shuttered their tattoo studios, Liu says the brand had 20,000 customers—a lot of bodies to be at mercy to. For their part, they have offered a refund to anyone whose tattoo hasn’t faded within three years (Liu offered me one too, when I spoke with him). But you can still get an Ephemeral tattoo at unaffiliated studios that offer them. Since the ink is wholesale and offered outside of Ephermeral’s purview now, customers with tattoos that last longer than three years are out of luck. Liu claims that new customers now have a deeper understanding of what they’re signing up for when they get an Ephemeral tattoo.
If I could remove mine, I would. But unlike regular tattoos, which you can laser off if you change your mind like Pete Davidson, there is no fail-safe solution for your Ephemeral tattoo. “We have tested laser removal and it has not worked,” says Liu. “Laser removal is designed to use a lot of heat to break up molecules. The materials we use break up in the presence of water, so applying heat to them does not actually replicate the same degradation process that water exposure does.” Liu rationalizes that every tattoo will fade eventually. “There’s a lot of empirical evidence that tattoos are fading and will fade for even the customers that are a little bit more impatient.” (To be clear, I don’t think that wanting a tattoo that was promised to fade within 15 months, but has stuck around for 3 years or longer to go away, qualifies as impatience.)
My Ephemeral tattoo has become a sort of inside joke among my friends. I go to yoga weekly with one of my best friends, and every Saturday, she sarcastically looks at it and says, “I feel like it’s finally fading!” Since it’s on my bicep, you can see it when I wear short sleeves. I have other tattoos, but every real one I’ve gotten has been meticulously planned and has a meaning—like a teeny tomato on my wrist to remind myself that summer always comes, and a piece of candy on the back of my arm because my grandfather called me Tootsie. Had I known my Ephemeral tattoo would be sticking around, I might have chosen my tattoo more intentionally, and I definitely would have gotten it in a less visible place.
But maybe Ephemeral tattoos were never meant for me. Bhanusali says that the reason he got involved in the brand was because of of its potential benefit to cancer patients. When someone is going through radiation treatment, they often get tattoos to ensure that their radiation treatment is accurate (it helps to ensure that the doctors administer treatment in the exact same place every time). According to the National Cancer Institute, about 2 million people in the United States are diagnosed with cancer every year, and the Mayo Clinic says that more than half of all cancer patients will receive radiation therapy. Bhanusali says that Ephemeral tattoo ink could be a “slam dunk” for radiation treatment. “It’s expensive to remove a radiation tattoo, so the hope is that people end up saving thousands of dollars and mentally have a bit more peace.”
To help ease the mental burden of a permanent radiation tattoo, Ephemeral has developed a version of their ink to be used in medical settings. “We’ve developed a product called FadeMark, which is now actually in the hands of a number of [cancer] clinics,” says Liu. “It’s going to be the first option to allow cancer patients to have a choice of whether or not they want to mark their bodies permanently for treatment or not.” Henry Ford Health has conducted a study on the safety of Ephemeral tattoos for radiation therapy—the initial results were promising, and it’s been submitted for publication. Bhanusali hopes that once it’s been reviewed and published, this study will pave a new path forward for radiation patients. If Ephemeral tattoos become an option for radiation patients, the brand might be able to win back some goodwill, and it would be deserved.
I find myself absentmindedly tracing my own Ephemeral tattoo often. Do I regret it? It’s a hard question to answer—three years ago, I was so excited to try it, and I was aware that there were risks when I signed up for it. Now, I wish I’d shown more discernment. Still, if I had to play the fool for someone going through cancer treatment to not need a permanent tattoo that always reminds them of a painful moment in their life, that’s just fine with me.
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