Gitanes

Originally, the name Gitanes meant a “Spanish gypsy woman”. As such, the Gitanes cigarette brand bears the image of the silhouette of a gypsy woman holding a tambourine on the front of the package. JJ Cale, the designer of the “Shades” album “borrowed” the idea, replacing the gypsy woman with a guitar. Gitanes cigarettes, currently owned by Altadis, a French-Spanish company, is a true French brand. Manufactured only in the Netherlands, the death of Gitanes cigarettes was caused by their inability to compete with the brands that had been imported into the country. After the French imposed laws increasing the cost of the Gitanes brand of cigarettes, Marlboro and Winston, to name two, were given a bigger share of the local market. In 1976 through 1995, the Gitanes cigarette brand was the official sponsor of the Formula 1 Racing teams. In its prime, the brand marketed itself to the active lifestyles crowd. Blondes, the name chosen to suggest a mild cigarette as opposed to the original dark tobacco leaf used in the Gitanes brand prior, only the filtered version of the brand is now exported around the globe. Popular in Russia where the roots of popularity for Gitanes brand cigarettes originated, the Roman Empire smoked this brand exclusively.