<\/p>\n
Much like a learner driver, or a toddler in their father\u2019s shoes, when a cigarette is in the hands of a non-smoker something just feels a bit\u2026 off. There\u2019s something about the mechanics of rolling, lighting, ashing and holding that leaves nowhere for a novice to hide.<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/p>\n As a legacy non-smoker myself, I can attest that whenever, say, after four or five pints at a day festival, I decide it\u2019s time for one of my bi-annual cigarettes, my friends laugh. Not because I am trying to be like them or because the concept of me being a smoker is entirely absurd, but because it is a (dangerous) habit that takes great practice to hone.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n This fact appears to be lost on a new generation of influencers and celebrities who have, almost 20 years after the indoor smoking ban, decided that smoking is cool again \u2013\u00a0or rather that smoking looks<\/em> cool again.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Just last week, intergenerational arbiters of cool Charlie XCX<\/a>, 33, and Madonna, 67, shared Djarum Black cloves on the front row of the Saint Laurent menswear show in Paris. The pair posed for pictures to signal that they had buried the hatchet after Madonna, whose album Confessions On A Dancefloor: Part II<\/em> comes out on 3 July, took umbrage with Charli XCX\u2019s recent lyrics declaring that \u2018the dancefloor is dead\u2019.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Taking to Instagram, Madonna clapped back, \u2018If your dancefloor feels dead, maybe you\u2019re playing the wrong music.\u2019 What better way, in 2026, to move on from a (blown up, faux) feud than to wear coordinated burgundy outfits on the front row and bask in each other\u2019s fumes?<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n It was a moment conceivably designed for social media \u2013 two icons making amends in the coolest way possible \u2013 except it didn\u2019t really land that way for everyone. The response hasn\u2019t been as legendary as the smokers might have hoped and the pictures have been called everything from \u2018performative\u2019 to \u2018childish\u2019, not least because Madonna has a well-established history of opposing smoking<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n However, Charli and Madonna are not alone. Between Hailey Bieber holding a cigarette on the cover of Interview<\/em> magazine in April, Addison Rae smoking two cigarettes at once in the music video for \u2018Aquamarine\u2019 and Kylie Jenner posting photos of a cigarette dangling from her lips for her 382 million followers on Instagram, aesthetic nicotine consumption is having something of a renaissance.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n The reason none of these shoots have the same je ne sais quoi as \u201890s paparazzi shots of Kate Moss and Naomi Campbell is because those probably weren\u2019t their first cigarettes. Kate and Naomi were doing it in an authentic, Parisian way, rather than a \u2018will this look good with the Paris filter on?\u2019 way. Kate even has the raspy voice to prove it.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Somehow in the past year, their culture has quite literally become a costume, or at least a social media prop.<\/p>\n