Smoking accessories are back, and frankly, we didn’t see that one coming.
Design trends have always been cyclical in nature, but one thing we didn’t expect to make a comeback is accessories dedicated to smoking. Surely, that taboo is set in stone? Apparently not: in recent months, a raft of cigarette holders, ashtrays and boxes have made their way back into designers’ collections, leading us to wonder: why now, when smoking is apparently terminally out of fashion?
It isn’t just an act of provocation. There’s an element of nostalgia at work: the glamour of accessories for smokers designed in decades past, with just one decadent purpose, resonates with creatives wrestling modern demands for design with mass commercial appeal. Designing for smokers allows them to explore a more esoteric niche. Equally, it taps into a contemporary craving for connection – in the digital age, the smoking ritual is a defiantly analogue form of social bonding.
Sophie Lou Jacobsen’s La Donna cigarette box.Photo: Alecio Ferrari, Creative Direction: C41, Set Design: Maria Giuditta Vettese and Chiara Talacci
Sophie Lou Jacobsen’s La Donna cigarette box in red.Courtesy of Sophie Lou Jacobsen
Smoking accessories are reappearing across the design world, reviving a category many assumed had disappeared for good.
French-American designer Sophie Lou Jacobsen’s La Donna cigarette box, enamelled in blood red and topped with a silver crescent moon, invites smokers to pick out cigarettes like cocktail canapes. “It functions as both object and social instrument,” says the designer, who was inspired by vintage Italian decorative arts and terrace culture, where smoking operated as a theatrical gesture of display. “I am drawn to objects with a specific, intentional single function, which were very prevalent in the past but are more and more lost in modern society – the cigarette case, the ashtray, the flask, the cocktail table,” Jacobsen explains. “We spent more time engaging in social rituals, and the objects designed for these moments were the props that fuelled the motions. I wanted to re-engage the social smoker in a more intentional situation, where the aspect of a shared, special cigarette is favoured.”
