I don’t know about you, but my fantasies about Fashion Week were kind of ruined when I found out that the entire thing smells like an ashtray. Which it does, thanks to NJOY Kings, the electronic cigarette company that’s an official sponsor of New York Fashion Week. NJOY reps have been walking around Lincoln Center handing out free samples all week, and according to Cosmo, the cigs are even included in goodie bags at big-name shows like Charlotte Ronson, Prabal Gurung and Jill Stuart.

Even with all the things we know today about the harmful effects of smoking, it still somehow demonstrates a sexy, devil-may-care tomboyishness; sultry and chic fashionistas like Kate Moss, Lady Gaga and new wonder child Cara Delevingne all are fully aware of the alluring power of a cigarette casually dangling between two fingers. 

An NJOY rep interviewed by Cosmo said that “since a lot of models, hairstylists, others backstage and a lot of fashion people alike smoke, we wanted to bring them a less abrasive option.” So what the fashion people have been getting is the electronic cigarette, a battery-operated plastic tube filled with nicotine solution. You inhale the chemicals, but what comes out of the cig is a supposedly safe vapor; in other words, still harmful to you, but supposedly not to others around you. According to this Huffington Post article on the dangers of e-cigarettes, they’re especially dangerous because they come in fun fruit and candy flavors, they can be sold to minors in many parts of the US and many of the US bans on cigarette advertising do not yet apply to e-cigs. 

The fact that a cigarette company of any sort is allowed to sponsor an event like New York Fashion Week is ludicrous. NYFW, which is officially named Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week, is of course technically allowed to accept any sponsorship they want, but its decision to accept money, and perhaps worse, free samples from a company that makes money by marketing a harmful—no, lethal—substance as “fun” and “fashionable” is a serious lapse in judgment. 

Fashion week runs on a very questionable multi-tier economy of women, from the overpaid celebrities who buy the clothes, to the underpaid models who walk the clothes, to the unpaid interns who bring the coffee that keeps everyone else alive. The exploitation of young model labor is a huge issue--many of these girls are very, very young. Karlie Kloss, who at 21 is largely credited for bringing back the supermodel era, was discovered at 13. Although the CDFA’s cutoff for modeling in NYFW is sixteen, it’s not uncommon for girls to be under that age (looking at you, Marc Jacobs.) Permitting NJOY Kings to tempt these girls, who are already under unimaginable pressure to look and act mature and sophisticated, with their e-cigarettes is simply unethical. Beyond that, they’re tempting the thousands of young people who long to be part of the glamorous wonderland of Fashion Week, but whose only connection to it is the online pictures and videos, many of which feature stylists and off-duty models taking smoke breaks. 

I don’t know what ticks me off more: that NYFW is allowing a cigarette company to use them as a marketing strategy, or that, after all we know about the effects of cigarettes, the marketing strategy still works. The simple fix is for NYFW to tell the NJOY reps to pack up their wares and beat it, but that doesn’t resolve the real issue: that cigarettes are still heavily featured in fashion imagery and continue to be considered cool, sexy and fashionable. That’s what needs to be fixed.

 

Reach Staff Reporter Gigi Gastevich here.