Bruno Levy is leveraging his profession as a tattoo artist for his first fashion label.

Levy, who also works as a multidisciplinary artist and tattoos out of Brooklyn’s Bandit Studio, is releasing his first fashion label, called Cigarettes by Bruno Levy, on Tuesday. The brand marks Levy’s first solo enterprise in the style world after working with brands like Hermès, Adidas, Cole Haan and others on previous projects.

“I’ve been wanting to expand into different mediums,” Levy said about launching the road. “I’ve had a couple of different careers spanning the course of my lifetime. In some ways, I feel like [Cigarettes] is a way for me to include plenty of things I used to be enthusiastic about.”

Cigarettes offers cardigans, T-shirts, dress shirts, trousers and accessories designed in a graphic and grungy aesthetic. Levy explained the cardigans, which are available a wide selection of colours, are the brand’s hero product. 

He took inspiration from his time living in Japan for the style, looking specifically to Japanese bomber jackets. He saw similarities between his work as a tattoo artist and the patchwork detailing on the bomber jackets and wanted to include that into his brand’s cardigans.

“There are plenty of tattoo motifs and placements in the way in which they were embroidered,” he explained. “I’m predominantly a tattoo artist. The last eight years of my life have been specializing in tattooing and I saw [the jackets] as almost an extension of my tattooing where the position, the dimensions and the way in which they read on the clothing were very just like the way in which a tattoo would read on the body.” 

It was also vital for Levy to create a genderless apparel line to supply options for a broader customer base, one he explained he falls into.

“Lots of the gathering, I used to be attempting to make something that anyone would need to wear,” he said. “It wouldn’t be confined to menswear or womenswear because I believe for me as a men’s consumer, it’s either all the pieces is de facto expressive or toned down and it’s hard for me to search out something that’s in the center where I can express myself, nevertheless it’s not completely neutral.” 

Levy is producing the road on a made-to-order basis to attenuate waste and reduce the quantity of overstock goods. The road’s T-shirts have already been produced in a small quantity. The brand is on the market on its website and styles range in price from $60 for a skull-themed candle to $540 for dress shirts. 

The tattoo artist said he’s currently working on his next collection, which he hopes to release in June. As he’s committed to minimizing waste, Levy hopes to work more with vintage and deadstock materials for upcoming collections.