"Curated" ear, "constellation" piercings, or whatever buzzword they are going by these days is the trend of getting a bunch of piercings throughout the ear. It's different from the "ear projects" of old because it's more mainstream. "Ear projects" often had custom jewelry and industrials and stretched lobes/cartilage, whatever. It was meant to be extreme:
"Curated" or "constellation" ear piercings don't usually have stretched anything or industrials, but rather sprinkle earrings in organized chaos throughout the ear. I'm going to say that Maria Tash, who does a lot of publicity with style sites and magazines and advertisers and who pierces a lot of celebrities, popularized this trend. Here's a picture I took at the Soho store, which has two earlobe piercings on top of each other and ideas for someone who may have a flat rook/outer conch:
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Few things I want to note about this trend:
1. all the metals/materials/colors must match! Most important.
2. Generally, the larger/more detailed earrings must be closer to your face, and the smaller, simpler ones away from your face:
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| my ear |
3. They may look girly and dainty, but many of these piercings aren't a joke. Daiths, conches, rooks, tragus, anti-tragus, (literally anything besides the lobe and the thinnest part of the cartilage) have a healing time of at least a year--the longest healing time of any piercing. In terms of pain and healing, this is easily the most "extreme" piercing trend in recent memory. Orbitals are just as painful as industrials: I wrote a post on the healing for mine, and it was agony for a year, fully healed in about a year and a half. I watched a YouTuber describe his anti-tragus as the most painful piercing he'd ever gotten, and it never stopped hurting after years.
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| rook and 2 outer conch |
4. Do not use a gun or do this yourself. I'm not against guns for thin lobes, but thicker lobes and anything else, absolutely not. As for DIY piercings, I'm also not against that, if you can do it safely and cleanly, but I don't recommend it for this trend. Even if you are good with a needle, I don't think you can be as precise as if someone else does it. If the angle is slightly off, you've ruined it.
5. You'll probably want to do the whole "curation" in one sitting, but keep in mind it will be more painful and you've got a greater chance of infection. If you've had piercings before and know how to avoid infection, by all means. But if you've never had anything except your lobe done, get one of them and see how you do. I've had 14 piercings, 4 of those were multiples done in one sitting. The way I see it is 1 year of agony beats 2 years of constant healing.
thoughts on the trend? Are your piercings "curated"?
