You can burn rubber and you can smoke the competition, but the folks behind Smoking Kills Please Drive Safely would prefer that you not smoke cigarettes.
It’s common knowledge that the greater world of motorsports is flush with sponsorships from the tobacco industry. While acknowledging this link between professional racing and big tobacco, Smoking Kills Please Drive Safely subverts that relationship with a fashion brand that reinvents liveries from the 1970s through the 2000s to focus on racing and ditch the smokes.
Take the “Schuey” t-shirt and hoodie (named in honor of Michael Shumacher’s 91 F1 wins) that transforms the Marlboro logo into a Ferrari logo—a trick the lifestyle brand pulls off with McLaren as well. The “God Save McQueen” line riffs on the orange and blue of the Gulf livery to create a new spin on the Porsche logo. You may detect the faint scent of nostalgia when you wear the logo out as a soft cotton tee or a hooded sweatshirt, but you won’t get a whiff of cigarette smoke.
Riffs on racing iconography aside, Smoking Kills Please Drive Safely also has a line of accessories with their simple warning presented in a way that would make the Surgeon General satisfied. Get “The Warning” on a stainless steel travel mug, or plaster it on your back bumper with a sticker.
