The Coolest Vice
Smoking ambassadors, cigarette nostalgia, and repositioning nicotine as biohacking
Is there any other product that continued to grow and dominate our culture despite very limited opportunities for legal promotion, quite like nicotine? Has any brand maintained the cool factor and a tight grip on the creative class for decades?
If you are an American, the cyclic “cigarettes are so back” conversation probably makes you cringe, but growing up in Europe in the early 2000s meant growing up around nicotine. Cigarettes were everywhere — our flats, TV, magazines, and fashion runways. It was normal to smoke and see other people smoke, and I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t also cool to smoke.
To some degree, it was because tobacco companies wanted you to think so. The OG cigarette marketing is practically a masterclass in building strong and cohesive brand identities. You don’t have to be a tobacco historian to make a connection between Marlboro and cowboys, Camel and adventure, Newport and young adults who refused to get out of water to light up a cig. My favorite cigarette branding is YSL Ritz cigarettes, manufactured by Reynolds Tobacco Company, that made “the woman who chose to smoke Yves Saint Laurent cigarettes more attractive than one who smokes another brand, or more attractive than a woman who did not smoke at all.”
Yet, the unofficial representation by the world’s hottest people was even more important and sticky, especially as regulations on tobacco advertising got tighter. For example, Malboro’s biggest accidental coup was getting supermodels to smoke Marlboro Light and Marlboro Gold. Not only did it constantly reinforce an association between smoking and skinny, it also created endless free media opportunities — the girls everyone wanted to be and be with were photographed holding a pack of Marlboro all over the world. By the time the competition recognized it as an advantage, it was already too late. Simon Mils writes about Camel’s failed attempt to sway the creative crowd away from Marlboro:
“At Oliver Peyton’s wildly fashionable Atlantic Bar and Grill in Piccadilly, cigarette girls would walk the floors brandishing trays of Camel Lights. If they spotted some hipster inhaler — Bono or Helena Christensen — with a pack of Marlboro Lights next to their Cosmopolitan cocktail, a Camel cutie would insert herself and offer a whole pack — gratis — so long as the celebrity smoker stubbed out his or her Marlboro Light and sparked up a Camel instead. It didn’t work. Marlboro Lights carried on being the default-setting smoke for bad-boy actors and 3am-eternal fashion mannequins.”
As the public opinion about smoking changed in 2010s, Kate Moss lighting up a cigarette on the Louis Vuitton runway got mixed reviews, and big glossy magazines moved away from using cigarettes in editorial shoots, the unofficial hot people ambassador program was maybe the only thing keeping the tobacco brand image strong. Eva Wiseman writes: “The problem with our major shift away from smoking was, while they could persuasively prove that it killed people, they were unable to convince anyone that cigarettes were not cool.”
Cigarette’s youngest brother, Zyn, is the epitome of uncool. Largely adopted by finance, tech, and other kinds of bros, nicotine pouches are more about bio hacking and time optimization than glamour. Peter Thiel said nicotine raises your IQ by ten points, Tucker Carlson claimed that ”Zyn is a powerful work enhancer” as well as “a man enhancer,” and Palantir’s CEO popped a zyn during a live interview and then proceeded to spin a book with his middle finger for the rest of it. Maybe the lamest part about it all is that the owner of Zyn, Phillip Morris, is the one spearheading the rebrand of wellness rebrand nicotine with the new “Delivering a Smoke-Free Future” tagline and a homepage full of reports on how they are changing for good. The same company that brought you Marlboro Gold is the one calling for a ban on cigarettes in a corporate wellness farce that reeks of plastic manufacturers and “sustainable” recycling programs.
In a sense, cigarettes is the only solid act of rebellion we have left. As John Ortved notes, even weed, “once the king of counterculture, is now a party to wellness. It’s not only legal in many states, but also that thing your nerdy uncle uses to help him sleep.” “Weed is positioned as medicine now. Cigarettes are this bad, cheeky thing,” one of his sources adds. To some degree, this new wellness positioning of nicotine is what’s driving the nostalgia towards the theatrics and the ritual of smoking cigarettes, and chatting up strangers outside of offices, nightclubs, and restaurants during smoke breaks. In 2024, cigarettes are back on the runway, in crystal bowls at the afterparties, and in celebrities’ hands in magazine cover shoots.
The problem is, by now, brands, celebrities, and influencers have leaned so heavily into wellness and cleanliness that even a slight departure from it, for a party or a European vacation cigarette, turns their IG comments into a battlefield. Last year, a clean beauty brand Merit made a chic lighter case and had to position it as part of the relaxing holiday ritual of lighting candles in a holiday customer giveaway. Good skin and smoking don’t mesh very well, and perhaps, a lighter case is a random merch item for a makeup company, but the customer response was so overwhelmingly negative that it makes you seriously question if using a cream vegan blush does, in fact, disqualify a woman from lighting up a cig.
There are lots of conflicting messages for women out there. Being cool means dressing chic, drinking martinis, summering in Europe, and sneaking in an occasional party cig. But no one wants to deal with the mess that leaning too much into any of these vices too heavily leads to — addiction, debt, and even constant cig bumming. You still got to brush your hair back, wake up early enough for the Sunday morning pilates class, and be diligent about your twelve-step skincare routine that concludes with a giant red-light mask. Mess, like smoking, is only charming in small doses when applied to an otherwise put together aesthetic that projects a certain air of success — the Jane Birkin bag charms, the button ups tucked straight into tights on the Miu Miu runway, and the paparazzi shots of Bella Hadid smoking a cigarette in Cannes. Maybe the reason why we need to reposition nicotine as biohacking so badly is so we can lean into it without putting ourselves and others in a state of cognitive dissonance.
IN THE MARGINS
A couple more things are on my mind besides desperately needing a party cig:
Zac Posen at Gap. I have a guest deep dive essay on major fashion rebrands coming, so I am really curious about Gap’s strategy. So far, we have the Met Gala demin dress, the DÔEN collab, and the Cannes dress. I need to see Zac’s first proper Gap collection and what the marketing for it will look like before I have an opinion.All I want is a couple of really good t-shirts, nice jeans, and hoodies, but I think it might look more like dresses and really feminine tops. This interview with the new CEO of Gap Richard Dickson is an interesting one.
I am not sure how I missed Julia Fox’s Mother’s Day New York Post’s Alexa cover shoot with her son. It couldn’t be more adorable!
Alyssa Vingan, ex-EIC of Nylon Magazine launched The New Garde podcast and the first episode with Brynn Wallner, the founder of Dimepiece, is a good listen, especially if you are building a content platform.
Viktor Komskii’s swan headpiece made out of hair:
In the words of Gwyneth Paltrow 'it's what makes life interesting, finding the balance between cigarettes and tofu'
so yes, Bella Hadid having a cig in Cannes while also being a woowoo supplements natural perfume person is not a big deal to me. I quit ten years ago out of vanity rather than any moral imperative, but I still believe life at the mercy of some wellness-girlie/biohacker-bro routine would be far more stressful and miserable than just having the damn smoke once in six months and moving on.
The comments on @best.dressed post and merit post are ICKING ME OUT. Anything that gets fragile wellness warriors so wound up entices me to want to do it just to prove I can live my own life!!!