There is no everyday gesture that has become quite as ritualistic as “coffee and cigarettes.” For some, coffee is simply an excuse to light a cigarette; for others, it’s the other way around. The fact remains that few things are as closely intertwined (especially in Italy) as a cup of coffee followed by a cigarette. Their popularity is obviously not due to the fact that they are two healthy habits (quite the opposite, in fact), but there is something deeper behind the appeal of this pairing.
Because coffee and cigarettes mean conversation, exchange, sometimes secrets and confessions, and at other times simply taking a break from reality, moving away from wherever you are. 

After writers like Italo Svevo, who through the figure of Zeno Cosini tried to understand where the real pleasure of smoking lies – in the endless and perpetual promise to quit – and filmmakers like Jim Jarmusch, who with his Coffee and Cigarettes shows just how endless a coffee and a cigarette can be, it comes as no surprise that the world of design has also decided to explore this pairing.

Solo e Sola is the cup designed by Theodore Ullrich for New York-based studio Tomorrow Lab, featuring a small hole in the handle designed to hold a cigarette and keep it always within reach.

Then there are those who approach the same theme by stripping away the overt irony and letting the form speak for itself. Carlo Trevisani, a Verona-born designer now based in Milan, with a background at ISIA Faenza spanning ceramics and lighting design, works on that subtle boundary between objects and emotional relationships, creating things that always seem to resemble an everyday gesture that already exists. His coffee & cigarettes is a study in form that places the two symbolic objects of the Italian break (and beyond) side by side, as if the designer were simply photographing a habit rather than inventing it. 

Finally, there are those who bring coffee and cigarettes together without even moving into the realm of production, remaining instead within the realm of pure imagination. Emanuele Jane Morelli, an Italian art director and prompt engineer known for his imagined collaborations between major fashion houses and iconic everyday objects, brings the same approach to this territory. His is an AI-generated concept imagining a coordinated coffee-and-cigarette set that abandons the shape of the classic coffee cup while embracing the aesthetics of contemporary luxury.

Three very different approaches that nevertheless all arrive at the same conclusion: coffee and cigarettes are not two separate gestures.