Gabriele Cardosi: The tattoo artist who rocks London

By Olivia Snaith-Cairns

Self-employed Italian tattoo artist hits London by storm with his Japanese artistic designs.

Photo Credit: Gabriele Cardosi via Instagram

Gabriele Cardosi tattoos his original designs, as well as creative custom designs, onto skin. Cardosi explained that he likes to work with icon designs, using figures that are ‘most successful or timeless’, including strong animals like tigers. “I’m really inspired by Japanese art or comic books, as well as pop and classic art,” explained the artist.

This 28-year-old artist enthusiastically said that he is proud that people will decide to wear his designs on their skin and enjoys working with different media.

“I think it’s important to make people happy and fully understand what they want. At the moment, I’m trying to work more with my own designs, but I always try to encourage people to be unique,” said Cardosi.

'Tiger Milk T-Shirt' Book £20

Photo credit: Gabriele Cardosi

The young artist spoke about how his customers pick their designs, explaining that they pick their own, or if they have set ideas and know where on their body they’d like the design, he would draw it to ‘fit exactly the area that they want’.

Cardosi also said that it is important to approach each creative media differently, including in his statement that ‘the more you learn and the more experience you have in difference fields, the better it gets’.

Radu Cristian Borza, 26, said that he’s been looking at Gabriele’s tattoos on Instagram for a while now and that he’s been trying to think of ideas which links back to the artist’s style. “I first saw one of Gabriele’s tattoos on a friend and I’ve loved them ever since,” said Borza.

“I think that the inspiration used from Japanese art is so creative and I’ve decided to get a custom design from Gabriele.”

Photo Credit: Gabriele Cardosi via Instagram, Antonello Zappa

In March 2020, Cardosi released his new ‘Tiger Milk’ hoodie, presenting ‘the colours of the Tigers’. The screen-printed organic hoodie was a limited-edition release of just 40 pieces of ‘anthem’ clothing. Cardosi stated in his promotion that the ‘clothing does not use harmful dyes, colourants or substances during manufacturing’, which would give some kind of ‘piece of mind’ to customers wanting to buy the piece of clothing.

'Creating Insomnia' Book £30

Photo credit: Gabriele Cardosi

Cardosi explained that he was very happy with the reaction given by his audience. “The hoodie was created more for my audience and for my friends, and I’m so happy that people are wearing my designs. I want to carry on with it and try to experiment and see how things go.”

You can shop Gabriele Cardosi’s collections via his website, or view his designs and other work on Instagram.