Why is Everyone Smoking Cigarettes Again?

Cigarettes are back on the streets of New York. Vapes are fading, 90s fashion is in, and effortless cool is smoking again.

  • By: Julianne Elise Beffa

There is an undeniable scene unfolding on the streets of New York, one that catches your eye even if you try not to notice it. Walking through SoHo, the Lower East Side, or the West Village, you begin to see it everywhere: women stepping outside bars and cafés, oversized blazers draped just so over their shoulders, hair perfectly sleek, sunglasses in place, and a cigarette poised between two fingers. There is no performance in it, no exaggerated attitude, no effort to be seen. It is an effortless mood, quietly commanding attention, almost ritualistic in its precision- the small pause, the careful exhale, the slow lean into the edge of the sidewalk. You find yourself staring, not because you want to smoke, but because the scene is undeniably cinematic.

The 90s have returned with more than just slip dresses, chokers, and minimalist makeup; they have resurrected a mood, an attitude, a way of moving through the world that feels deliberate yet nonchalant. With this revival comes the Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy aesthetic: sleek hair, long coats, minimalist jewelry, and, inevitably, cigarettes. In this context, smoking is not a statement in the traditional sense; it is an extension of the self, a punctuation mark on a carefully curated moment. There is a ritual in smoking that vapes cannot replicate. Vapes are engineered, controlled, and sanitized; cigarettes, by contrast, are inconvenient, fleeting, and human. They demand a pause, a step back from the endless flow of life, and in that pause, they create something rare: a moment.

I hate the smell. I hate what cigarettes do to health. And yet, I cannot deny their visual power. They are cinematic, a symbol of quiet detachment, a nod to a slower, more deliberate era that predated the obsession with optimization, performance metrics, and social-media-ready perfection. Cigarettes are impossible to stage or gamify. They simply exist, and in their existence, they are magnetic.

Vapes tried to modernize indulgence. They failed. Glow sticks in your hand, artificial flavors, engineered clouds—they never achieved the same effortless, human elegance. Cigarettes, with all their contradictions, deliver drama, nuance, and impermanence that cannot be digitized. They are inconvenient, yes, but that inconvenience is the point. They force you to pause, to step outside, to breathe, and to exist outside the constant performance of New York life.

There is a social quality to smoking that cannot be overstated. A cigarette becomes a reason to step outside a crowded party, a reason to share a moment, laugh, and watch the city move around you. Couples lean against building facades, friends trade cigarettes, strangers share a lighter. Vapes never fostered that intimacy; they were personal, isolated, awkwardly modern. Cigarettes are human, flawed, fleeting, and sometimes, that is exactly what makes them magnetic.

The 90s revival is about mood as much as it is about clothing. Cigarettes fit seamlessly into that narrative. They are the accessory that refuses to accessorize, the detail that cannot be staged, the element that exists without trying, yet commands attention. They are subtle, quiet, and inherently stylish, as much a part of the cityscape as the coat racks, the corner cafés, and the cobblestone streets.

So yes, cigarettes are back. Not as part of a massive, everyone-is-doing-it campaign, but in these small, highly visual doses: the coat thrown over the shoulder, the oversized blazer, the cigarette curled between fingers, smoke drifting in the winter air. Walking through the city now, seeing this scene over and over, it is impossible not to notice.

I still hate the smell. I still hate what cigarettes do. But in a city that has spent the last decade optimizing every part of life, from morning routines to workouts to social media feeds, cigarettes are a deliberate imperfection we cannot stage, sanitize, or engineer. They are flawed, fleeting, and human. In their return, they remind us that sometimes style is not calculated—it is lived.

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