Could This Be the Most Controversial Trend of 2026?

Smoking accessories are back, and frankly, we didn't see that one coming.

Design trends have always been cyclical in nature, but one thing we didn’t expect to make a comeback is accessories dedicated to smoking. Surely, that taboo is set in stone? Apparently not: in recent months, a raft of cigarette holders, ashtrays and boxes have made their way back into designers’ collections, leading us to wonder: why now, when smoking is apparently terminally out of fashion?

It isn’t just an act of provocation. There’s an element of nostalgia at work: the glamour of accessories for smokers designed in decades past, with just one decadent purpose, resonates with creatives wrestling modern demands for design with mass commercial appeal. Designing for smokers allows them to explore a more esoteric niche. Equally, it taps into a contemporary craving for connection – in the digital age, the smoking ritual is a defiantly analogue form of social bonding.

Could This Be the Most Controversial Trend of 2026 How smoking accessories are making a comeback

Smoking accessories are reappearing across the design world, reviving a category many assumed had disappeared for good.

French-American designer Sophie Lou Jacobsen’s La Donna cigarette box, enamelled in blood red and topped with a silver crescent moon, invites smokers to pick out cigarettes like cocktail canapes. “It functions as both object and social instrument,” says the designer, who was inspired by vintage Italian decorative arts and terrace culture, where smoking operated as a theatrical gesture of display. “I am drawn to objects with a specific, intentional single function, which were very prevalent in the past but are more and more lost in modern society – the cigarette case, the ashtray, the flask, the cocktail table,” Jacobsen explains. “We spent more time engaging in social rituals, and the objects designed for these moments were the props that fuelled the motions. I wanted to re-engage the social smoker in a more intentional situation, where the aspect of a shared, special cigarette is favoured.”

Jacobsen adds that it’s precisely because designs catering to smoking have almost disappeared that she decided to focus on this typology. The same was true for Berlin designer Caspar Fischer, whose rechargeable To Brick Or Not To Brick desk lamp incorporates a fold-out ashtray/cigarette holder. “I think the stigma around smoking is actually part of what makes this object interesting,” he reflects. “At first glance, a lamp has nothing to do with an ashtray, and this unexpected combination creates a certain tension. It invites people to look closer and question their assumptions. Smoking also evokes a different era – a time when people still smoked indoors, and when social rituals around gathering and conversation played a much larger role. I associate that period with very distinctive design decisions and interiors, such as conversation pits, which created spaces specifically intended for spending time together.”

The social aspect of smoking also inspired the Cigarette Break event by creative entrepreneurs’ network NeueHaus at Milan Design Week last April, when collectible cigarette packs were handed out to participants. “What fascinates us about the cigarette break is twofold,” says co-founder and creative director Lena Pia Hammerstingl. “First, stepping out for a cigarette creates an occasion for spontaneous conversations with strangers - something people rarely do any more. The beauty of these serendipitous encounters is that they can begin a new relationship that leads to new opportunities, which is what NeueHaus is about. Or they’re just five minutes of a fun conversation before everyone continues with their lives. Second, cigarettes have long been a vehicle of inspiration for creatives. Sometimes all you need to digest a thought or arrive at a good idea is a moment of active passivity.”

Elsewhere, designers are using cigarettes as an opportunity to transform other product typologies. Armenian studio Electric Architects’ Vice Consumption series, unveiled with design and lifestyle platform Deoron at Milan Design Week, reinvents eight traditional objects as smoking accessories, including a candelabra, an etagère, a knuckleduster ring and serving platters.

The candelabra morphs into a multi-branch ashtray, while a tiered fruit stand becomes “a clinical monument to cumulative consumption”. “Vice Consumption treats self-indulgence as a ritual rather than a mindless act,” the studio says. “By utilising the high-fidelity reflection of polished stainless steel, the objects force the user to witness their own physical erosion at the moment of indulgence.”

In Milan, Deoron also presented Korean designer Yeonsu Ra/Na’s miniature “cigarette umbrella”, part of her Emerging Absurdity series of “accessories for contemporary daily life”. Thoughtfully made but humorous in intent, it was inspired by the designer’s wish to smoke in the rain without huddling under a conventional umbrella with a crowd of people. “These are not solutions to urgent problems, but careful responses to emotional details,” says Yeonsu of the five-piece collection, noting that it explores “how even the smallest gestures and habits can be elevated, questioned, or gently exaggerated through form”.

Berlin label Geste’s Brume object, also unveiled at the Deoron showcase, functions as an ashtray or incense holder. Celebrating “smoke rituals” in a dual sense, it’s a more palatable way to sneak smoking-related design into the home, under the cover of diffusing scent.

For Hammerstingl, though, there’s no harm in occasional explorations of smoking culture like her Cigarette Break event. “It’s okay to do things that are unhealthy or unproductive; finding joy in them is part of what makes us human,” she reflects. “Some people in our community told us they anchor beautiful memories to a cigarette. While so much right now is focused on self-optimisation, we wanted to celebrate that.”

Smoking accessories are reappearing across the design world, reviving a category many assumed had disappeared for good.

Also read: