Kat Von D

Kat Von D is a Mexican-American tattoo artist, model, entrepreneur, and TV personality whose two-decade career has produced multiple defining 2000s and 2010s American TV reality-show roles — particularly her 2008–2013 lead role on TLC's tattoo-shop reality TV series LA Ink. She was born Katherine von Drachenberg on March 8, 1982, in Montemorelos, Nuevo León, Mexico, into a Mexican Argentine-and-Italian Seventh-day Adventist missionary family. Her father Rene Drachenberg was an Argentine Adventist physician and her mother Sylvia Galeano was a Spanish-Mexican homemaker. The family relocated to Colton, California, when she was four.

Her 1996 first tattoo apprenticeship at age 14 — at the Sin City Tattoo shop in Colton, California — and her subsequent late-1990s and early-2000s tattoo-artist career across multiple Los Angeles-area tattoo shops launched her mid-2000s American tattoo-artist public profile. Her 2005 work at the Hollywood-area High Voltage Tattoo shop preceded her 2005 American TV reality-show breakthrough.

Her July 2005 first appearance on TLC's tattoo-shop reality TV series Miami Ink (which followed the day-to-day operation of the South Beach Miami Beach tattoo shop owned by Ami James) — across the 2005–2007 first three seasons of the series — launched her American TV reality-show public profile. Her 2007 spinoff TV series LA Ink — set at her own High Voltage Tattoo shop in Hollywood — ran for four seasons across 2007–2011 and produced her 2000s American TV reality-show commercial peak.

Her 2008 founding of the Kat Von D Beauty cosmetics line in collaboration with Sephora — and her subsequent 2010 founding of the High Voltage Classic clothing line — launched her 2010s American beauty-and-fashion businesswoman career. The Kat Von D Beauty cosmetics line has continued to shape 2010s and 2020s American multi-ethnic-cosmetics retail. Her 2018 marriage to American musician Leafar Seyer (lead singer of the band Prayers) and her 2018 son Leafar Von D Reyes produced her late-2010s and 2020s biographical narrative.

Her name Kat began as a diminutive of Katherine (from the Greek Aikaterinē meaning "pure"). Kat has been a popular American girls' name across the 20th century.