Why cigarette cases are smoking hot

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Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

The year is 1962. We find ourselves in the richly gilded Louis XV-style salons of Les Ambassadeurs Club in Mayfair. A knot of spectators is gathered around a game of baccarat, where a glamorous woman in a red dress is losing to a man in a shawl-collared dinner jacket. He reaches for a gunmetal Dunhill cigarette case. “I admire your courage, Miss er…?” he says….