Noel King

What?

Make the case.

Tell us what's going on.

Gen Z's fascination with smoking is really anchored in the way that Gen Z do things, which is it's much more about how it looks than actually practicing it.

I think one of my favorite pieces of data in how Gen Z is having this, like, pushing this smoking revival is a piece of research from the Fashion Data Account Style Analytics, where they've reported that in 2024, 2025,

searches for the term smoking pose were up by 70% on Pinterest.

We are seeing this huge revival in online spaces where smoking is suddenly everywhere again.

And if you look at the, even if you compare this to like the 2010s, like sort of your big pop stars today, like Sabrina Carpenter, Chapel Roan, they're posing with cigarettes, which we couldn't really picture like Taylor Swift ever doing.

I think part of the smoking revival, I would really attribute it to Charli XCX and the brat era.

So that's kind of harking back to 2024, which is a little while ago now.

But I think that's really where this fascination began.

And Charli XCX, unlike Sabrina Carpenter, is a celebrity who's seen smoking.

There's a very iconic image of her at her wedding to the 1975's George Daniel, where she's sitting in front of two electronic bikes in East London smoking a cigarette.

Matty was actually asking me this when we came back from Ibiza.

He was like,

are you actually partying like as much as it looks like you are?

Or is it all a bit of a like?

And I was like, no, like we are.

And beyond in sort of music, we're also seeing this pop up a lot in television and subsequently on TikTok edits, which is mostly where Gen Z will be consuming TV anyway.

But smoking is really prominent in all of the biggest TV shows right now, whether that's Love Story.