Piercings and tattoos have boomed from a subculture into a massive industry, with more and more people getting 'ear stacks' and other jewellery than ever before.
London's top piercing studio Metal Morphosis has been in the game for over 30 years and have pierced an endless number of celebrity clients coming for their expertise.
The family-run studio know how keen their customers are to get stylish and unique jewellery in rather than the plain titanium ball but this eagerness can lead to some grim consequences.
With so many years in the business, owner Matthew Harris has seen it all but one problem comes up again and again - changing unhealed piercings.
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"The first thing clients always says to me is when can I change it?" Matthew told The Mirror. "I always recommend them to buy something they like, that way they don’t have to change it and risk a potential infection because they are touching it."
Matthew's son Ben, who runs Metal Morphosis with him, said: "People want to get pierced with something fancy as quickly as possible. They don't want to have this long bar with a standard ball on the end."
Changing your piercing before the wound has time to heal is one of the issues the studio is trying to fight against, by selling titanium jewellery with delicate designs so customers don't want to change. Titanium is best for piercings as it contains no nickel so won't turn your ear black and is hypoallergenic.
"The definition of healed is a very, very difficult thing to explain because a piercing can vary," explained Matthew. "[An ear lobe] can be anything from three months to six months but a nipple or the top of an ear can take up to a year."
Healing isn't linear either as "being run-down or knocking it" can cause your piercing to become agitated and "flare up", which can be a problem if it swells and a customer has changed it for a shorter bar.
"There always needs to be room for swelling," the piercer explained. "Whether that's swelling straightaway or two, three or six months down the line.
"If you change the bar too early for vanity, it's not good for the sanity - you're going to end up with problems."
Fiddling with the jewellery with unclean hands is common, which can cause infections, especially in new piercings. Often when customers replace their titanium bar, they do so in favour of fashion jewellery which can be allergenic and unsterile.
Ben shared: "We get a lot of clients come into us who got pierced by a jewellery brand and it's pierced wrong or with the wrong metal or the bar's not long enough. They've been told that they can change it six weeks too early, why? so that they can upsell this fashion jewellery."
"I can't tell you how many times we've had to dig balls or backplates out of people's ears because of the vanity, they don't want to take it out either," added Matthew.
Customers changing their bar for a hoop too early is an additional problem, as the curved shape interferes with the healing on the straight "apple core-like" hole.
Matthew explained that hoops are also "putting bacteria into the piercing as it spins and they get inflamed" so shouldn't be used until the piercing is fully healed.
Ben added that Metal Morphosis lets customers come in at any time to get their piercing checked, to see if it has healed enough to replace the jewellery. They will even swap the bar for a shorter one, "free of charge."
"When it's completely healed then it's established," Matthew concluded. "Which means when you can take it out, leave it out for a week, two weeks, and still put something back in.
"Just because something's been in there for six months, it doesn't necessarily mean it is completely healed."
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