Cigarettes in Fashion: Smoking Hot?

In many ways, fashion thrives on glamour. If the fashion industry labels a trend as glamorous, the gene

Photo: The Coveted

ral public often clamors for it. Glamour is one of the things that makes a trend; After all, if it isn’t glamorous, why would it catch the public’s attention in the first place?

The idea of being glamorous can make any trend seem like a must-have. Shoulder padded eighties jackets, for instance, have been “in” since the start of the summer.

But there are a lot of questionable trends that fashion has been trying to push. Sending skinnier and skinnier models down the runways, for instance, could give the wrong message to young people who look to fashion as a source of creative information.

What about cigarettes? Smoking and fashion have been inextricably tied together for, well, a very long time. It is not uncommon to come across an editorial with a model smoking a cigarette, with a distant gaze in her eyes as if she doesn’t have any worries.

Editorials that are more provocative also often feature cigarettes. Sultry models  staring at the camera with smoke seeping out of their mouths makes smoking seem exotic and enticing.

And let’s not forget fashion behind the scenes. Street style photographers and backstage photographers often catch high-profile men and women of the fashion industry with cigarettes in their hands. These people, who get first dibs on runway collections and can pretty much forecast the trends for the next three seasons, are featured on widely read street style blogs, and often are smoking in the photos.

Models caught off-duty are also usually seen gathered together at parties and fashion shows, lighting their cigarettes and smoking away.

So it’s no wonder that, given the glamorous nature of fashion and the tendency for people to follow trends, the public often criticizes the use of smoking and cigarettes in the fashion industry. If I see all of my favo

rite models and stylists smoking and all of my favorite glossies featuring editorials with cigarettes in them, then will I be pressured to take up smoking myself?

Models Smoking: Mat Szwajkos/Getty Images

I think that this is an issue that every fashionista has come across; Personally, I think that smoking isinadvertently advertised by the fashion industry.

While fashion is highly subjective and artistic, editorials and street style photography is much like advertising. In a magazine editorial, for example, the clothes and accessories are labeled and the price can be found on the same page as the photo. Although usually the pieces featured in editorials are way to expensive to even think about buying, the fact that the price is printed on the page makes me more curious about the brand itself.

What if magazines started printing the brand of cigarette that the model was smoking, if smoking was featured in the editorial? What I am trying to say is that smoking in fashion really runs a fine line between being advertised and being looked at as “the stylist’s artistic vision.”

Models themselves often smoke because the nicotine can reduce appetite, which can keep down their weight. Models who are young teenagers may also take up smoking to give the impression that they are older.

While the industry may characterize smoking as something glamorous and worth doing for the sake of style, I’m sure that many former and current smokers would agree that smoking in real life is not the same in fashion mags.

Jennine Jacob, from the fashion blog The Coveted, remarked on her old smoking habits and how it actually affected her life:

“The time before quitting, I was so ashamed of my habit, everyone gave me trouble about it, everyone, friends, family, co-workers, neighbors, potential boyfriends. I smoked on my fire escape, only after work, never in public, I even had a  hat to cover so the smoke wouldn’t get in my hair. And I continued to smoke. Not being able to quit was so very embarrassing. What’s more, is that smoking did not make me glamorous, didn’t make me thin, didn’t make me cool, didn’t add to my style at all.”

While Jacobs obviously had a difficult time trying to reconcile her life and relationships with her smoking habit, the models and fashion industry leaders seem to portray smoking as something that can actually make you fit in rather than be looked down upon.

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