One of our favorite treat-yourself moments is investing in a fresh ear piercing (or two) along with some gorgeous new jewelry. Consider it a specialized form of retail therapy. Once you’ve accumulated more than one or two holes, however, things can get a little chaotic in terms of styling and general aesthetics. I know that for my left ear, where the majority of my piercings are, the selection of earrings had grown haphazard and unbalanced, and our social media manager, Brooke, felt the same way about her earring situation.
So we decided to consult one of the industry’s most in-demand piercers to help curate our existing earrings, as well as pierce, rearrange, and generally update our ears:
Adrian Castillo
of
108 BK and 108 L.A. studios
. In case you’re not familiar, he works with famed piercer
J. Colby Smith,
alternating between the East and West Coasts, and is generally one of the loveliest people who will ever come at you with a needle. We stopped by the
Brooklyn location
to voice our concerns about the current look of our ears and undergo some crucial
jewelry rearrangements
. Check out our before-and-after photos below, plus Castillo’s reasoning behind our ear transformations.
Why did you choose the piercing(s) for our ears? What was missing in terms of balance, styling, etc.?
“While I think your ears were well done and didn’t find anything wrong with them, I thought that we could have a more cohesive concept for them. Instead of looking like [they] had been pierced throughout the years and having random things in random areas, just utilize that jewelry to build a look that seems as though you got everything at the same time.”
What jewelry did you sub out for our previous piercings, and why did you make those choices in terms of earring style and color?
“For Hannah, I think you made the right choice by sticking with yellow gold because of your skin tone and hair color. I just utilized what you already had and wanted the jewelry and highlights in your hair to complement each other. I also added a second lobe piercing, but stacked it vertically because you had the ear for it and it was a little more unique. I chose the jewelry for the stacked look because you had a black diamond already and just wanted some form of matching. I took that black diamond out of the center of your ear so you could get a little more sparkle on it, and you could see the obvious match of the two black diamonds. I chose the hoop for your conch because it’s a statement piece, and I think delicate hoops never go out of style.”
“For Brooke I used rose gold, because I think her hair really worked well with that color. I also took into consideration the hair color she naturally has, and I think the contrast of dark brown hair with rose gold looks really good. I just wanted to showcase different ways you could utilize one certain type of jewelry. All those piercings are hoops, but they
’
re all used in three different ways and sitting at three different angles.”
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