A Family That Pierces Together, Stays Together

Flor de Oro is a piercing studio working with the best jewelry brands and artisans in the world of body art to offer piercings with soul. A place where you breathe love, respect, culture, and knowledge.

Tai Sycheva

Updated 10:28 am EST, December 12, 2024

Published 01:08 am EST, December 12, 2024

Featuring Flor de Oro Piercing & Fine Jewelry

From left to right: Em Brzakala, Macuile, Nahuel Burgos Vinas, and Patty Pain

Producer: Natasha Tabunova
Photographer: Flávio Iryoda
retoucher: Luiz Camargo

Culture

A Family That Pierces Together, Stays Together

Tai Sycheva

Updated 10:28 am EST, December 12, 2024

Published 01:08 am EST, December 12, 2024

Featuring Flor de Oro Piercing & Fine Jewelry

From left to right: Em Brzakala, Macuile, Nahuel Burgos Vinas, and Patty Pain

Producer: Natasha Tabunova
Photographer: Flávio Iryoda
retoucher: Luiz Camargo

Not Your Regular Piercing Studio

Interviewing four piercers felt as intimidating as you would imagine it to be. Having woken up criminally early for the deed, my escapade from the previous night had offered me a buzzing distraction from the torturous attempts my mind was making to come up with conversation topics with people who make holes in other people for a living.

As a matter of fact, when I was asked if this article would be something I would be interested in writing, I thought that piercings were limited experiences- something you get at Clair’s to be the prettiest girl at the ball, something you do in school bathrooms to spite your parents, or just a bad decision to externalize your midlife crisis.

Flor de Oro is more than a piercing studio. It brings together the best jewelry brands and artisans from the world of body art to offer piercings with soul. From left to right: Em Brzakala, Macuile, Nahuel Burgos Vinas, and Patty.

I’ve always been vaguely aware of the existence of piercing enthusiasts, but that awareness has never developed into anything more. Just like we live our entire lives (most of us, at least) being conscious of the existence of, but not knowing anything about quantum physics or rocket science, I was ready to let the piercing profession continue to exist as a faint concept.

Beyond the Needle

Outside of the Flor de Oro piercing studio, I couldn’t help but spend some moments observing through the comforting barrier of the window the four piercers- three covered in black-out tattoos and one delicate yet stern-faced. The latter was a generous and welcome transition to the space- clean, light, open, and not connotative with a butcher shop at all. Having built the courage to enter, I met with Nahuel Burgos Vinas, Macuile, Em Brzakala, and Paty.

Flor de Oro is more than a piercing studio. It brings together the best jewelry brands and artisans from the world of body art to offer piercings with soul. From left to right: Macuile, Em Brzakala, Patty, and Nahuel Burgos Vinas.

The first fact I learned about them was that the group, peculiarly, consisted of half vegetarians and half vegans. This threw me off enough to crumble any prejudices that I thought would be helpful in our interaction. It was not, per se, that I envisioned cannibalistic sadists. Still, I had definitely allowed my imagination to create exaggerated caricatures that craved justification.

The Mind

Nahuel possessed a commanding presence, one that intimidated until it unveiled itself as the determination and care for his profession and partners. The creation of the studio was his initiative, and the unexpectedly refined and luxurious jewelry and space came together in physicality by virtue of his earnest conviction.

Nahuel Burgos Vinas from Flor de Oro, a Piercing & Fine Jewelry

As a matter of fact, even in our conversations, Nahuel did a better job than I, who had succumbed to my curiosity to know the perspective on every ethical and speculative topic that the group had, in providing me with the information that would satisfy this article rather than myself.

The Soul

Where Nahuel is the group’s mind, Macuile is best described as the spirit. A person exceptionally composed, one who manages to hold complex grace despite or maybe even partially due to the thick face tattoos and piercings that would look otherwise threatening on another person. One who will redraw a dot on your lobe a million times if you ask him to without batting an eye.

Macuile from Flor de Oro Piercing & Fine Jewelry

Someone who trusted his friend to tattoo his skull without taking one look in the mirror at the design that will remain with him for the rest of his life. Macuile is someone you simply know to trust with the impalement of any body part you feel inclined to impale. As it happens, I did something better: I brought my own mother, who faints at the sight of a safety pin, to get pierced by Macuile, who seemed to have single-handedly healed my mother of her trypanophobia???

The Heart

Since I now appear to be stuck with assigning each member of Flor de Oro a symbolic body part, allow me to drop that rather dull metaphor without repercussion and introduce Em as a rare gem of our society. Someone who does not come as an unconstructed version of herself upon introduction but fully baked and ready for consumption with the entire spectrum of her personality. This is a simplicity not many of us are capable of mastering, hesitating to drop our act of mystery and “nonchalantness.”

Em Brzakala from Flor de Oro Piercing & Fine Jewelry

And frankly, a blandness that we refuse to perceive as such until we stubble upon people like Em, who put our prudence to shame. My usual inner monologue to ensure my body language is open and relaxed to best offer comfort to the people I am drilling with questions – something I picked up on in one TED talk or another – became more useless than my recording tools. Through the lens of Em, I describe most of what I learned about Flor de Oro:

Flor de Oro is a piercing studio working with the best jewelry brands and jewelry artisans in the world of body art to offer piercings with soul. A place where you breathe love, respect, culture, and knowledge.

The Star

Paty, the newest addition to the group, is the star ‘constellationist`, meaning a specialization in compositioning jewelry sets for her clients incorporating their respective anatomy. In 2018, she co-founded one of the first studios in Spain dedicated to professional piercing. Paty is quiet, humble, sweet, and responsible for the online video content that Flor de Oro posts- an artist of piercing and marketology, a true jack of all trades.

Patty from Flor de Oro Piercing & Fine Jewelry

Considering the dynamics of how Flor de Oro works, the system is fully functioning due to the previous backgrounds that each member brings to the table. The members hold insatiable curiosity for one another’s practice and are insistent on learning everything the others know.

This, in a way, is the heartbeat of the studio- the rhythmic exchange of knowledge and energy between piercers that, leading up to the opening, held their own on different paths and most in different countries. This, in truth, being the true gem of the studio, a team that lacks nothing.

Art, Style & Safety

Considering the existence of piercing conventions, the hierarchy of popularity between piercers, apprenticeships, ethical disputes, artistic expression, and other factors of piercing that seem more earthly than what general knowledge of the professional suggests- piercing is more ordinary than your grandparents likely have you believe.

That being said, it is unfortunate that piercing studios are still not common. According to Nahuel, there are only around five studios (not counting those that practice in tandem with tattoo shops) in Spain, even fewer just a year ago when Flor de Oro opened.

It is, however, only piercing studios like Flor de Oro that can have me, a self-proclaimed artist, convinced of the artistic nature of the practice. The jewelry brands Flor de Oro works with are very much unlike the pieces you find on Shein, and, as a matter of fact, I have sullied the artisanal pieces just by mentioning the two in the same sentence.

The brands are carefully selected at piercing conventions and are unlike any I have seen before – a variety of gems and styles, enough to accommodate even the pickiest of customers. The group is on the top list of brand representatives who work to honor mutual benefit.

The studio offers a space for the brands to grow, and brands give Flor de Oro a showcase of mouth-watering jewels that conveniently attract the most tasteful of clients who admire pretty and shiny things.

The New Elegance

Despite the potential financial threat of restricting their market by collaborating with the finest of artisanal jewelers – not to mention the risk of opening a studio counting on a clientele to engage with a close to uncharted market – the risk reaps a great reward. A practice, a team, and a space that ultimately canonizes craftmanship. I cannot better describe my newly found understanding of piercing than Macuile’s explanation at our second meeting. “Skin connects with everything. It is the inside, and it is the outside. I don’t know how to describe it in words, but the pain describes it well.”

And so, despite my two prudent lobes and one previously thought to be an edgy helix piercing threatening to close up, I managed to get through the meeting with Nahuel, Em, Macuile, and Paty unscathed. Right after, I called my mom and told her that she would look so elegant and daring with a nose piercing, and I just knew the incontestable place to do so.