Ava Phillippe has never treated tattoos like a permanent personality test. Her collection is small, easy to miss in some photos, and full of tiny designs that make more sense once she explains them. In 2025, she gave a casual tattoo tour and admitted she was already rethinking a few pieces. That honesty is a big part of what makes her ink interesting.
She has eight tattoos in total, including a feather, angel numbers, the word “true,” three birds for herself and her brothers, and an orchid with a little face that she calls her favorite. Three older pieces — a ticket stub, a crying eye, and a candle with a match — are being removed. So this isn’t just a list of pretty little tattoos. It’s also a snapshot of someone letting her style change as she gets older.
Ava’s small collection started with personal details
Most of Ava’s tattoos sit on her arms, which keeps them visible without making them the first thing people notice. They’re fine-line pieces and small bits of lettering rather than huge blocks of colour. In red-carpet photos, you might see one on her upper arm and another near her wrist. In a close-up, more of the collection comes into view.
That placement suits the way she talks about them. Ava hasn’t presented herself as someone with a carefully designed sleeve or a grand tattoo concept. The designs have arrived at different points, and each one carries its own little memory. Some are sentimental, some are playful, and at least a few simply stopped feeling like her.
The collection feels young in a good way. There’s no pressure for every mark to match. The pieces look like they were chosen because they meant something at the time, not because they were all meant to fit one fashionable aesthetic.
The feather is one of her easiest tattoos to spot
A small feather sits near Ava’s wrist and is one of the clearest designs shown during her tattoo tour. It’s light, simple, and exactly the kind of piece that can disappear under a bracelet or sleeve. When she raises her hand in the close-up footage, though, it becomes easy to see.
There isn’t a dramatic public explanation attached to every line of the feather, and that’s fine. Not every tattoo needs a long backstory to be meaningful. The feather works because it has a soft, slightly old-fashioned feel, while the rest of her arm carries more direct reminders of family and identity.
It also shows why small tattoos can be tricky to photograph. A design that looks clear on skin can turn into a grey smudge in a distant event shot. Ava’s close-up images are much more useful because they show the scale and placement instead of making readers guess what they’re looking at.
Four nines and true keep the message simple
One of Ava’s tattoos uses four number nines to represent her birthday. It’s a small idea, but it gives the collection a clear personal anchor. Rather than tattooing a full date in a large script, she kept the reference quiet and easy to wear.
She also has the word “true” inked on her arm. It’s the sort of single-word tattoo that can mean different things depending on the day. It might be a reminder to stay honest, a nod to being herself in public, or simply a word she liked enough to keep close. Ava hasn’t turned it into a grand slogan, and the low-key placement keeps it from feeling like one.
Together, the numbers and the lettering show the balance in her collection. One design points to a fact about her life, while the other is more open-ended. They’re both small, but neither feels random.
Three birds represent Ava and her brothers
Ava has three birds to represent herself and her two brothers. It’s one of the warmer ideas in the collection because the design turns a family connection into something simple and visual. The birds don’t need names or dates underneath them. The number does the work.
Family tattoos can get overly formal very quickly, especially when they involve full names or big portraits. Ava went in the opposite direction. The birds are small, light, and spaced like part of a group of personal notes on the arm. They feel more like a private joke or a shared symbol than a public announcement.
The meaning also gives the rest of the tattoos a bit more context. Ava grew up surrounded by famous family names, so the three birds are a reminder that her closest relationships aren’t really about celebrity at all. They’re about the people she grew up with.
Her orchid baby is the favourite
Ava has said her favourite tattoo is an orchid with a little face in it. She described the piece as representing her sensitive younger self, which gives it more personality than the usual flower tattoo. It isn’t just an orchid chosen because it looked pretty. The face turns it into a character, almost like a tiny version of Ava that she decided to carry forward.
That idea fits the way she talks about growing up and finding her own direction. She has spoken about resisting the assumption that she would automatically become an actor because her parents are actors. The orchid baby feels connected to that process: it keeps a softer, more emotional part of her in view without making her stay stuck there.
It’s also a good example of why tattoo descriptions matter. From across a room, it’s easy to call the design a flower and move on. Up close, the face changes the whole mood. The piece becomes a little strange, a little sweet, and much more recognisably hers.
Three older tattoos are being removed
Ava’s tattoo tour was unusually open about removal. She said she was having a rethink and planned to laser off three designs: an “admit one” ticket, a crying eye, and a candle with a match. None of them were described as terrible. They simply no longer felt like the right choices to keep forever.
That’s probably the most relatable part of the whole collection. People often talk about tattoos as if every decision has to remain meaningful for life. In reality, tastes change. A design can belong perfectly to one period and still feel out of place a few years later. Ava’s decision doesn’t erase the earlier version of herself; it just accepts that she’s moved on.
The ticket stub has a playful, impulsive feel, while the eye and candle sound more symbolic. They also show how different her earlier choices were from the quieter family and identity pieces she currently talks about most. The collection is changing in public, but the change itself is part of the story.
What Ava Phillippe’s tattoos say about her style
Ava’s tattoos aren’t loud, but they aren’t generic either. The best-known pieces have a clear connection to family, memory, or the way she sees herself. The orchid baby is personal. The three birds are about her brothers. The nines point to her birthday. Even the designs she is removing tell us something about how her taste has shifted.
There’s also a nice lack of perfection to the whole thing. The tattoos don’t form one seamless visual project, and they don’t need to. They look like a real collection built over time, with a few pieces kept because they still feel right and others let go because they don’t.
If you’re looking for ideas, the useful lesson isn’t to copy Ava’s feather or birds exactly. It’s to think about scale and placement. A small tattoo can still carry a real memory, and a simple design leaves room for the rest of your life to change around it. That feels much more practical than trying to plan an entire identity in one sitting.
What makes the collection feel human is the mix of certainty and second thoughts. Ava can talk warmly about the orchid baby and the birds, then calmly say that other tattoos are on their way out. Those two things can exist together. A tattoo can have been a good idea, do its job for a while, and still become something you would rather not carry forward.
That is especially true with small tattoos because they often come from quick moments. The design may be tiny, but the decision can be tied to a friendship, a phase, a trip, or a version of yourself you were trying to understand. When the moment passes, the tattoo is still there. Laser removal gives Ava a way to edit the collection without pretending those earlier choices never happened.
Her remaining pieces have a softer rhythm. The feather is delicate, the nines are personal, the birds are connected, and the orchid has a little bit of odd charm. None of them need to shout. They work as details that become clearer when you look properly, which is probably why the photos that show the arms are more useful than generic red-carpet portraits.
There is no reason to assume these are the final tattoos Ava will ever have. She is still young, still working out what kind of creative life she wants, and clearly comfortable changing her mind. If another piece arrives, it will probably make more sense as part of that ongoing process than as a sudden attempt to reinvent her whole look.
Watch Ava’s related interview
There doesn’t appear to be a dedicated YouTube tattoo tour from Ava, so here’s a relevant profile video about her public life and family background.