Sink back into a leather armchair and let the grey plumes curl up to the ceiling. Tobacco may be banned from bars and clubs across Western cities, but the gentlemen’s smoking lounge is making a comeback.
Even as Spain prepares to ring in the New Year with a smoking ban in bars, renegade nightspots in Paris and Berlin are bucking the European trend, opening designer smoking rooms, complete with pianos, pool tables and cigar lockers.
Since the French capital outlawed smoking in bars and clubs three years ago, sending hordes of punters onto the sidewalk to smoke and chat, the city has seen a surge in lawsuits pitting clubs and bars against their sleepless neighbours.
So it’s hardly surprising that high-end Paris clubs are now spearheading the smoking lounge revival.
In the heart of the Latin Quarter on Paris’ Left Bank, Castel – a private club founded in 1958 which has hosted the likes of Mick Jagger and Romy Schneider – just opened one as part of a top-to-bottom makeover.
Nestled just off the dance floor downstairs, Castel’s smoking room boasts a grand piano that the chain-smoking chanteur Serge Gainsbourg used to play, under black-and-white shots of famous smokers – all still living, of course.
Stylish as it may be, Xavier Brunet, the club’s head of public relations, says the smoking room is not intended as an attraction.
“We’re not here to encourage people to smoke,” Mr Brunet said. “It’s just to do people a favour.”
French law still allows indoor smoking spaces provided they have state-of-the-art ventilation and that no staff operate inside.
For Castel the room is simply a way to spare its members-only film, fashion and finance world clientele the indignity of huddling outdoors on the sidewalk – and to keep on good terms with the neighbours.
“We don’t want people spending hours in here with their drinks. And we don’t play music in here although people are free to sit at the piano,” Mr Brunet said.
For that reason the atmosphere is designed to be elegant – but not too comfortable, with just two leather seats embedded in the wall that are clearly intended to perch on, not doze off in.
Over the River Seine at the Royal Monceau luxury hotel, the owners have no such qualms.
Top designer Philippe Starck has created an old-style cigar bar dubbed La Fumée Rouge (The Red Smoke), which opens in January as part of a revamp of the 80-year-old hotel off the Champs Elysées.
Patrons are invited to pick an after-dinner liqueur from a trolley at the entrance and curl up with a paper and a Havana – humble cigarettes not welcome here – which regulars can stow for safekeeping in a private locker on site.
The Royal Monceau describes the 12-seater, red-lit bar as “a radical act”.