I was never a smoker. The closest I came was in high school, during a short gig as a busser and salad bar attendant at Sea Galley in Bellevue, WA. People would leave half-empty packs of cigarettes on the tables and I'd scoop them up at the end of the night. I'd get off work late, and since I already had my mom's car — a 1974 Toyota Corolla with faux-wood paneling — and my friends were out doing whatever they were doing in the days before cell phones, I would drive around Seattle and smoke and listen to The Smiths and New Order and angst it up.Maybe it was the wide variety of brands I sampled in a given night, or the pace, but cigarettes never sat quite right with me. When I quit Sea Galley I gave them up, along with free crab legs and mini corn.I never minded smoking though — in fact I always liked a smokey bar — it just wasn't for me personally. Emily smoked when I met her, and I'm not gonna lie, I thought it was pretty hot.When we moved to New York and she started law school, she used to go out to smoke on our mini-stoop in Hell's Kitchen.An old neighbor of ours with a black and white cat would bum smokes from her using hand signals. He didn't speak English, and he didn't really speak at all — his voice was pretty much gone. Not long after that Emily quit smoking altogether (a demonstration of will power — quitting during law school).Awhile after that the smoking ban went into effect. We were against it — we thought it would take all the character(s) out of the bars. In fact what it did was make it possible to wear the same clothes a few times before dreaded trips to the Puerto Rican laundromat on 10th Avenue.
Not much makes me miss smoking — either by me or in my immediate vicinity — but these newly re-designed YSL cigarettes are undeniably chic.If it was 1999 and Emily was having a bad day at Columbia, she might come home to find a gift carton of these waiting on the coffee table. Order yours here.