Vaping devices sure have changed over the years. When vaping was first invented more than a decade ago, the first devices were intentionally styled to look as much like tobacco cigarettes as possible. It was important to have that visual cue because when the first vapes began appearing in stores, most smokers didn’t know that they existed. The similarity to tobacco cigarettes provided a visual indication that the devices had something to do with smoking and made tobacco users want to investigate further.
Today, though, it’s an entirely different situation. Vapes have been around for more than 10 years now. Virtually every smoker knows that vaping exists and has at least a general idea of what the devices look like. Because people are now broadly aware of vaping, it’s no longer necessary for the devices to look like cigarettes. Manufacturers are now free to use a wide variety of different designs, and that has turned vapes into fashion statements of sorts. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? As with many other aspects of fashion, it’s a little of both.
In this article, we’ll explore the fashion of vaping from all angles. Let’s dive in.
Vaping Makes People Want to Show Off Their New Tobacco-Free Lifestyles
One of the biggest reasons why vapes became fashion statements in the first place was because people wanted to show off the fact that they’d broken free from tobacco use. That’s completely understandable. Even during the early days of vaping, the little red or blue LED on the end of an e-cigarette was a fashion statement of sorts. Although vapes look completely different now, holding a vape in your hand instead of a cigarette is still emblematic of your major lifestyle change. Switching from smoking to vaping isn’t easy – it’s just easier than other methods. Quitting is a major accomplishment no matter how you do it, and you have every reason to feel incredibly proud of yourself.
Fashionable Vapes Encourage Unscrupulous Manufacturers to Make Counterfeits
During the early years of vaping, all of the devices on the market looked basically the same as one another. Some looked like traditional cigarettes, and others looked like small cigars – but otherwise, there wasn’t much that visually distinguished the different brands. That prevented any one brand from really taking over the industry, and every brand enjoyed roughly the same level of popularity.
Today, it’s an entirely different story. Because the different types of vapes look so different from one another and have widely varying sets of features, some brands have become more popular than others. Although the most popular vape brands have changed many times over the years, there’s always at least one brand that seems to enjoy a much higher level of success than everyone else.
If you follow the fashion industry at all, you know this one universal truth: If a brand becomes popular enough, unscrupulous manufacturers will copy it. The market for fake products is estimated to be worth something like $2 trillion annually, and the vaping industry definitely isn’t immune from this trend.
- In the mid-to-late 2010s, fake JUUL pods flooded the market.
- In 2020-2021, fake Puff Bars became the next major issue.
- These days, fake Elf Bars are appearing around the world.
Any time a brand becomes so popular that creating fake versions of it can be profitable, you can bet that counterfeits will appear. That’s exactly what has happened with the most popular vapes for several years now, and the proliferation of fake vapes is a direct result of the fact that the products are now fashionable.
Fashionable Vapes Might Appeal to Those Who Don’t Use Nicotine Already
When any type of product becomes fashionable, the natural result is that its user base will grow. That’s mostly a good thing. In the case of adults-only products, though, there’s a chance of the user base expanding beyond what was originally intended. There’s an argument to be made that this has happened in the case of the vaping industry; there are surely some college students and other young adults today who vape and might not have smoked if vaping never existed.
There is also a great deal of evidence to suggest that a significant number of young people have started vaping despite not being old enough to purchase nicotine products legally. Teen vaping has coincided with a near-elimination of teen smoking, though, making it seem more likely than ever that vaping will one day make all forms of tobacco use completely obsolete.
As we enter a new age of fashionable vapes, it’s important for the world’s governments to implement common-sense regulations that allow adults to access alternative nicotine products while restricting access to those who shouldn’t be buying them. Top vape shops like VapeJuice.com use strict age verification systems to ensure that only adults can complete their purchases.
What Are Some of the Things That Manufacturers Are Doing to Make Their Vapes More Fashionable?
Now that you have a better understanding of the pros and cons of vapes as fashion statements, let’s examine some of the interesting things that today’s vape manufacturers are doing to make their devices stand out.
- Technical Gimmicks: One of the easiest ways to make a vaping device stand out is by giving it a new technical feature that has never appeared anywhere else. There’s only so much that you can do to make a vaping device unique, though, and any successful innovation is quickly copied by other brands. Some of the new technical features that have made recent vaping devices stand out include things like smart displays and removable e-liquid pods for disposable vapes.
- Luxury Materials: When it comes to the inclusion of luxury materials in modern vaping devices, the sky is really the limit – it’s just a matter of what consumers want and how much they’re willing to pay. Some of the expensive or unusual materials that manufacturers have used in their vape mods include precious metals, crystals, gemstones, carbon fiber and leather.
- Different Shapes and Colors: People expect vaping devices to be affordable – especially in the case of disposable vapes, which only last a few days before running out of e-liquid. In this product category, manufacturers usually skip the luxury materials and go for eye-catching designs instead. One of the current trends in the world of disposable vapes is the use of color-coding to signify flavor. The bright colors make the devices stand out on store shelves, which is helpful in an increasingly crowded marketplace.
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