Mira Mariah

You know what we miss? A night out in New York City. But tattoo artist Mira Mariah aka girlknewyork might miss it the most.

Mira runs on lavish, mysterious, raucous, romantic, fluid, moonlight energy. While you were busy in 2015 making out in a dark bar or texting that person who never showed up, Mira was too; but she was also observing these night-adjacent experiences on an intensely visceral level. The fleeting details—from that one dreamy photograph plastered in a closet-bathroom hybrid to the strange guy you always see at that bar in the same hat—are tattooed in her mind. They’re what fuels her poignant, fun and dainty body illustrations and the way she approaches life at large.

As the founder of tattoo shop girlknewyork on the Lower East Side, Mira is selective about how many clients she takes on—pandemic or not—and applications can be found on her website. She’s also a true girl’s girl and one who has weathered many storms with grace and fortitude.

We recently spoke with Mira about the complexities of living with a disability (she wears a prosthetic after losing her leg at 17), having a night-time spirit, and establishing friend-to-client relationships that keep her business evolving in a myriad of ways.

Hey! So, how are you?

I’m good! I’m on the Lower East Side in NYC, which I haven’t left for a year now.

When did you first realize you had a talent for illustration and what led you to apply that skill to tattooing?

I’ve been an illustrator since I was a little girl. I thought about it because I wanted tattoos that looked like my drawings. And I don’t even have that many tattoos of my own drawings, but that’s what I originally thought. I wanted to see tattoos that were more fun and feminine.

Living with a disability is incredibly complex, but you haven’t let it stop you from becoming wildly successful. Do you ever look back on how far you have come with your own self-acceptance?

It’s not like a journey up. Maybe for a non-disabled person you can think about it like your weight. Throughout your life you gain or lose 10-20 lbs. There are times when you’re thinner and times when you’re heavier. It comes and goes. And even when you get to your goal weight, sometime you’ll stray from that. That’s what I feel like about accepting my disability; there are times when I don’t think about it at all and times where it is the center of my life because it’s giving me a hard time or I’m struggling with pain. There are times I’m just not feeling good about myself and think an outfit would look way better if I wasn’t disabled. On the flip side, I also have times where I am able to reach people in a really different and unique way. I’m also highly compassionate and innovative in the ways I work and solve problems because, I have to be innovative. To be disabled is to be constantly innovative, because the world is not made for disabled people. And the world could never be made for disabled people because disabilities and levels of needs are so different. 

That makes total sense. Also, I love that poem on your website about parties. How have you been getting out some of that energy that we usually release during a night out? Or is that night spirit just apart of your being?

Yeah, I think that spirit lives in me. If it’s just me and my daughter at home, I can make it feel like a party by mood, music and joy. How I’m handling that this week is by committing to a full outfit even if no one is going to see. Right now, I’m wearing 12 hair clips.

You do have great outfits. Do you shop mostly vintage?

Definitely a lot of vintage. I also can sew, so I make stuff all the time and I really like some of the smaller Instagram brands like Selkie and Lirika Matoshi, but I don’t actually shop that often. I’m very scavenger-oriented.

Did you learn to sew when you were a kid?

Yes, and I went to school for women’s wear fashion design, so most of my college education was in sewing and pattern-making. 

And you worked in fashion for a while. What was that transition like from working in fashion to opening your own tattoo studio?

I worked in fashion, but I was really young and making tech packs on a computer. It was not for me. I wanted something with more action so I took a tattoo apprenticeship, then I worked at a tattoo shop for a while, then at a private studio in the back of a gallery, and afterwards at Fleur Noire. Now we work out of the Lower East Side in Manhattan at my studio, Girl Knew York.

Have you been seeing more foot traffic in your shop or less because of the pandemic?

Because we have an application process, we only see as many people as we feel comfortable seeing, in or out of a pandemic. I don’t have an area where you can just drop in. I see less people now living in a pandemic because I’m trying my hardest to be responsible. I used to let girls bring their friends and I only have 1 person at a time now. I also used to have a more bustling entourage/crew and we can’t do that anymore. So that’s different, but we try to keep the vibe in the shop like the poem on the website. It’s pink and it’s beautiful and we listen to Dua Lipa all day.

What are some of your go-to beauty products?

I really like this Facial Oil by Winky Lux. It’s not expensive and I use it 20x a day.

I love the KUSH Waterproof Mascara by MILK.

I have a Sugar Caramel Lip Balm with Fresh Beauty that comes with stickers I designed and that’s also one of my favorites.

You’ve done a bunch of brand collabs—including Fresh, Yellowpop and MeUndies. How do you go about forming them? 

Fresh approached me a long time ago and then we worked on a project together. If I’m obsessed with a brand or a product, I make it part of my personality. I will let everyone know. I was a Fresh super fan and then one of their PR girls came for a tattoo and saw that I had their face spray on my table and then it went from there. It always feels really organic.

Tattooing someone is a very intimate process. Does that naturally lead to a lot of personal friendships?

I’m selling friendship. I often become friends with my clients; my business manager Camilla got a tattoo from me. I thought she was cool and then eventually she ended up quitting her job and becoming my business partner. And that story is really common for me. My now upstairs neighbor was a client of mine working on her sleeve and she was flying in from Detroit often. I was like “I feel so bad you keep having to fly in from Detroit for this,” and she said “I wish I just lived in New York, but it’s really hard.” So she ended up sleeping on my couch for a few weeks while she interviewed for jobs and now she lives upstairs from me. The client-to- friend thing happens very often. They’re all my friends! That’s the thing, I’m not girlknewyork, you’re girlknewyork.

How many tattoos do you have? Do you look at them as telling your life story? Are they a mix of completely random and then meaningful?

I have 50-something tattoos and I’d say it’s about half and half. As a disabled person, I don’t think about my body the way that other people do. It’s just a body, my spirit lives inside of it. So some of the tattoos I have are really comical; they don’t mean anything. And then some of them are really beautiful and others are sentimental. ‘Cause I’m funny and sentimental and also beautiful.

Who do you think you were in a past life?

I think I was a really happy french peasant just baking bread, wearing a corset, having 10 babies and frolicking around picking wild flowers while waiting for my man to get home from war. And I probably had a bunch of lady lovers while I wait for my man to get home.