We have to talk about Le Creuset

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If you had come to me a few years ago in a sort of A Christmas Carol dream sequence and said to me “you’re going to find the culture around Le Creuset very unchic,” I would have shot you with a gun. Le Creuset? Like from Julia Child?? Fat chance. It’s French! How could it ever be unchic?

And yet, my dear reader. And yet.

Much like everything else, things are getting a little weird and gauche in the world of heritage French cookware.

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Le Creuset, for the unaware, was founded in 1925 after two Belgians, one a casting specialist and one an enameling specialist, met at the Brussels Fair and decided to put two and two together and make enameled cast iron. They created their first cocotte (all these things we call Dutch Ovens are really French Ovens, but that’s the sort of nitpicking that makes people not want to hang out with you) in the iconic orange-red Volcanique. Now, perhaps two decades of hagging and being on the computer has poisoned my brain, but I’m wondering if Messieurs De Saegher and Aubecq ever explored each other’s bodies …

Anyways, since then Le Creuset has done some classic business stuff like mergers and acquisitions and now makes a complete array of enameled cast iron cookware as well as stainless steel and nonstick, and every kitchen accoutrement that you could possibly imagine. The original orange colorway is now Flame, though representatives from the company have intimated in recent years that Le Creuset is de-prioritizing orange in favor of more on-trend colors. Oh, to have been a fly on the wall in that all-hands staff meeting.

Julia Child’s Le Creuset (in Flame) is on display in the Smithsonian.

Ina Garten cooks with a variety of Le Creuset on her show including the classic Flame and discontinued Fennel, but real heads know that her Hamptons kitchen is home to an entire wall of cocottes in Dune (as documented by Deb Perelman of Smitten Kitchen in 2013) which I believe to have been a PR gift, and a small collection of discontinued Kiwi, which I believe to be her original Le Creuset purchases and still her everyday cookware. Martha Stewart, proprietress of her own line of cookery, rarely showcased the brand on her show but did partner with Le Creuset for a massive giveaway a few years ago; I don’t know what lies within her own cupboard but if you do, hit my line.

There was a time where it seemed like Le Creuset might fall victim to the tidal wave of direct-to-consumer cookware which plagued the late twenty-tens. Great Jones and Our Place and all the other two-word Instagram brands were offering a similar aesthetic (and ostensibly, performance) as those stodgy heritage brands at a fraction of the cost. You want a green pan? We’ve got a green pan! In fact, the very first newsletter I ever wrote, over five years ago, was on this subject. At the time, I was telling you to buy one nice thing and then buy the rest from a restaurant supply store, and I’m pleased to report that not much has changed. When I wrote that, however, I only owned one piece of Le Creuset. Now, quite happily, I own six.

I still have my signature round Dutch oven (in Matte Navy), purchased with my first adult paycheck and a Williams Sonoma gift card. I feel confident that I will have this pot for my entire life, that I will be cursing it with each apartment move forever, and that it will be the only new, full-price item I ever buy from the brand.

When I moved to England, my Mom gave me an enameled frying pan (in discontinued Meringue), as a housewarming present, cementing my lifelong allegiance in the war between Meringue, Brioche, and Dune.

And then we get into the second-hand purchases.

A signature braiser (in discontinued Lapis), my first Facebook Marketplace purchase. I would also prefer to have this until I die.

Two saucepans--a classic lidded one and a multifunction pan, whose lid is also a frying pan (both in Flame). I don’t care for Flame and never sought it, but there’s this really fabulous older Gentleman in London Fields whose husband occasionally makes him liquidate a cupboard, and I was there buying something else and these were five pounds a piece. I think there are probably weeks of my life where I only use the multifunction pan. These two are beat to hell and my hope is that one day I will find a reasonably priced replacement in a nice blue or green and then I’ll leave these two on my stoop for someone to find.

And finally, a non-enameled cast iron skillet, the old ones with the really long wooden handle (in Cerise, a colorway I truly actually dislike), because I found it among the discarded trash of a £2 million townhouse, slightly unseasoned but in otherwise working order. Free Le Creuset est gratuit Le Creuset!

I maintain a saved search for Le Creuset on Marketplace and I’ll be real, I check it three or four times a week. But I don’t need any more. And I certainly don’t have room.

So yes, I have a Le Creuset collection. I’m not the only one.

This week, the New York Times ran a feature on The Color-Drenched Cult of Le Creuset, marking the brand’s 100th birthday. Aside from a precious photo of Julia Moskin’s parents with their well-worn Flame collection they bought in 1965, I found myself uneasy with the coverage of Le Creuset collectors building custom storage rooms and industrial shelving for their dozens, hundreds, and even thousands of pieces of cookware. It’s hard not to notice the difference between Moskin’s parents’ pots and that of the other collectors featured, and it mirrored something I’ve been noticing across Instagram and Tik Tok when I get Le Creuset content. These collections are pristine: no scorching, no discoloration, no wear and tear of any kind. in other words, no signs of cooking.

I look at a pristine Le Creuset cocotte like I imagine a seasoned tradesman looks at a pristine Dodge Ram, truck bed empty. Why spend all that money if you’re not gonna haul anything?

Le Creuset collectordom is no longer the preserve of kooky old ladies with funky glasses. Under the looming threat of DTC competitors, the brand has made a successful marketing pivot towards women in their 20s and 30s by moving towards the precious-if-impractical. Last year, their collection of fruit-shaped stoneware cocottes went mega viral on pretty much every possible platform. Even at the core enamel offering, new colorways and designs reflect an “I’m just a girl” moodboard in beautiful pinks and purples. Scrolling Tik Tok, you can find 26-year olds with cabinets full of $400 cocottes in the cutest colors. I’m happy for Le Creuset that they were able to un-disrupt themselves from the clutches of VC-backed Instagram brands, but I can’t help but see this Zillenial marketing shift as reflective of broader unseemly trends.

Overconsumption is all around us. Fast fashion and obsolete tech and the whole Tik Tok-ified lifestyle content where people live in a Sharper Image catalogue abound. But expensive heritage cookware is such a funny thing to overconsume, right?

I suppose Le Creuset has always been a class signifier because it’s always been expensive. But it also used to signify aspirations of serious cooking. You bought a Le Creuset cocotte because you intended to BRAISE things.

Cooking and class seems to be going in two divergent directions now, both of them bad. On one hand is the ostentatious: the behemoth unused Le Creuset collection, the Architectural Digest home tour where a celebrity points at a $10,000 gas range and says “I don’t use this.” Coveted cookware and designer kitchens serve as ornaments for the non-cook. It’s foodless, complete form over function. On the other hand is the austere: the Founder/CEO type surviving on viscous smoothies and kibble. It’s beautyless, a reduction of food to pure caloric intake. They’re trying to make it illegal to be a bon vivant!

It’s hard to talk about any sort of internet culture thing because the refrain is always “let people enjoy things!” They’re not harming you, right? How someone chooses to spend their hard-earned money is none of your business. Well first of all, gauche behavior does harm me. A video tour of your 100-piece “Lay Crew-set” collection that’s never seen combat harms me. You guys get to have your Catholic Guilt and make it everyone’s problem but when I display a little Episcopalian Fear of The Uncouth suddenly we’re intolerant. I see. Anyways, of course, buying things isn’t actually a neutral act. Moving markets and shifting production of goods isn’t a neutral act!

What does it mean for Le Creuset to lean into this cutesy aesthetic? Cast iron products are still made at the foundry in France, but their stoneware products--including much of the real babygirl shit like the blueberry pots--are made in Eswatini. What does a rapid scale-up of that operation look like?

And what does it mean that all the form-and-function brands are responding to aesthetic whims? Does Carhartt make clothes for electricians anymore, or do the market forces dictate that they cater to the 20-something male manipulators? At what point does Le Creuset have a fiduciary responsibility to be cutesy? Where does the function go?

Anyways, when it comes to Le Creuset, thrift and discernment are chic. Those marketing executives in Framingham, MA cooked when they coined the phrase Maxxinista! You don’t need an entire kitchen of LC cookware. Buying full-price, especially full-price stoneware, is for chumps. One big fuck off cocotte will make you feel like a baller, but baby let’s get on FB Marketplace. 🫒