How old is Madonna? On Wednesday, she was seen in the front row at the YSL Men’s show in Milan publicly puffing on something slim and brown. The scene turned a style cue into a talking point again, because the same habit is being sold as cool even as it carries the same old cost.
Madonna and Charli xcx at YSL
Madonna sat beside Debi Mazar and Connor Storrie, with Charli xcx nearby puffing on a Marlboro Red. Simon Mills wrote that smoking is back among the cool crowd, and he framed the tableau with one blunt line: “There’s a whiff of performative rebelliousness too – and that’s just a big ick”.
About 30 years ago, Kate Moss became an unofficial ambassador for Marlboro Lights, and the habit has since cycled back through entertainment. The article points to House of Cards, with Robin Wright and Kevin Spacey, as part of the smoking renaissance that started 12 or so years ago, before last year’s detail of Charli xcx’s wedding guests being offered plates of free cigarettes.
£25 packs and £40 Vogues
Legal sales of cigarettes may be down by 52 per cent in the UK, yet 12.6 billion sticks are still sold every year there. The pricing tells the other half of the story: a packet of 20 can cost £25, super chic Vogues can run to £40, and Marlboros cost the equivalent of £27.09 in Australia, 55p in Nigeria, and £2.63 in Russia.
Most of the UK’s contraband cigarettes come from Belarus, where Marlboros are £2.19 per pack and 610 million illegally sold cigarettes were estimated to have originated there. That gap between image and economics is the point: cigarettes can still read as a fashion prop even when the trade is shrinking and the supply chain has moved underground.
Gwyneth Paltrow, Gaga, Haslam
Gwyneth Paltrow admitted she still enjoyed the occasional cigarette, Lady Gaga poses with a filter top in the video for her “Die With A Smile” video, and Nicky Haslam smokes Super Kings at dinner parties. Simon Mills also wrote, “No one asks for permission; other show guests dare not complain about harmful, secondary fumes.”
He drew the sharpest line around Madonna herself: “Madonna, who spends an inordinate amount of her time trying to look younger, is publicly puffing on fags, which are guaranteed to make her look older.” That is the contradiction at the centre of the image — rebellious on the surface, costly and ageing in the same frame. The smoking may look fashionable, but it is still a habit that leaves everyone in the room breathing the downside.
