106-Year-Old Tattoo Artist Becomes Vogue’s Oldest Magazine Cover Model
Vogue has inked a new milestone thanks to Apo Maria “Whang-Od” Oggay, a 106-year-old Indigenous Filipina tattoo artist who is now the oldest person to front its magazines.
Whang-Od was unanimously picked by the editorial team to make the cover of Vogue Philippines’ April 2023 issue due to her apparent and innate “strength and beauty of the Filipino spirit,” the magazine details.
Superseding the record set by Judi Dench, who at 85 years old was the oldest Vogue cover star for her appearance in British Vogue back in May 2020, Whang-Od is also the country’s oldest mambabatok (traditional Kalinga tattooist). She started out hand-tapping tattoos as a teenager, with guidance from her father, and became the first and only female tattoo master of her time.
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“Heralded as the last mambabatok of her generation, she has imprinted the symbols of the Kalinga tribe—signifying strength, bravery, and beauty—on the skin of thousands of people who have made the pilgrimage to Buscalan,” pens the publication.
Whang-Od has traveled to villages near and far to engrave sacred motifs into the skin of people who have accomplished rites of passage, or are about to start a significant chapter in Indigenous culture. For men, this meant stepping into the shoes of respected headhunting warriors. For women, the tattoos symbolized beauty and coming of age.
Unlike materialistic objects like gold and jewelry, these designs are possessions that can follow the tribespeople into the afterlife.
Vogue Philippines continues: “By tattooing people outside of her community, Apo Whang-Od sparked renewed interest in the ancient practice of stick and thorn tattooing, which had started to fade away.
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“Now, the 106-year-old mambabatok is leading a new generation of tattoo artists who are eager to carry on the tradition.”
Despite pouring into her craft almost all her life, the tattoo artist only drew clients from the far stretches of the world in the last 15 years or so, largely due to her appearance in tattoo anthropologist Dr Lars Krutak’s Discovery Channel series Tattoo Hunter, and the fact that the dirt path to her village has been ever-so-slightly smoothed down.
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“When visitors come from far away, I will give them the tatak (stamp of) Buscalan, tatak Kalinga for as long as my eyes can see,” the woman proclaims.
As mambabatok can only hand over the ropes to others in their bloodlines, Whang-Od, who has never had children, is training her 10-year-old grandniece, Grace Palicas, to be her protégé.
[via PureWow, Vogue Philippines, CNN, images via Vogue Philippines]
