Celebrating 100 years: The colour-drenched cult of French cookware powerhouse Le Creuset
NEW YORK – Ms April Hershberger is not the only collector of Le Creuset cookware who owns so many pieces that she cannot count them.
But she may be the only one who built an entire house around one: the deep-red, 9-quart (about 8.5 litres) oval Dutch oven she received as a gift for her 2006 wedding. It sparked an obsession.
She had her kitchen stove, the centrepiece of her home in a restored barn in south-eastern Pennsylvania, custom-made to match her collection of Le Creuset cherry-red pots, baking dishes, pitchers, plates and more.
The 42-year-old also has pieces in mustard yellow and sunflower yellow, Mediterranean blue and Caribbean blue, forest green and lime green, which she frequently arranges and rearranges into stripes, swirls and rainbows, documenting it all on Instagram.
'I could never commit to one colour,' she said.
Ms April Hershberger with her first Le Creuset pot at her home in Salisbury, Pennsylvania, on April 9. Like many collectors, she received her first pot as a wedding gift. Unlike most, she built a new kitchen around its deep red hue.
PHOTO: KRISTIAN THACKER/NYTIMES
Like French luxury fashion houses Hermes and Chanel, Le Creuset (luh cruh-SAY, according to the official video, meaning French for crucible) is a Gallic legacy brand that has flourished in the modern global marketplace by becoming collectible while also remaining functional. And collectors have turned what was once a niche brand into a near-cult, perpetually entranced by new lines, colours and shapes.
Some stick to a colour family, such as pastels. Others focus on a single item across the spectrum, such as trivets or pie birds.
'As an Aries, fire and flames speak to me,' said Ms Arlene Robillard, a purist who has one of the world's largest collections of the company's original colour: Volcanique, an orange-red ombre sold in the United States as Flame.
A photo provided by Ms Arlene Robillard shows part of her collection of Le Creuset cookware in the company's original colour: Volcanique, an orange-red ombre sold in the United States as Flame.
PHOTO: ARLENE ROBILLARD VIA NYTIMES
To celebrate its 100th anniversary, Le Creuset recently released its latest colour, Flamme Doree (golden flame). It is close to the original hue, with a gold shimmer added, like expensive make-up or a shot of Goldschlager liqueur.
Months ago, a sighting of the new hue at an unspecified Williams Sonoma store sent the Le Creuset Lovers group on Facebook, which has 97,000 members, into a frenzy of speculation.
Two Le Creuset pots in the company's latest colour, Flamme Doree (golden flame), are displayed for a photograph in New York on April 2.
PHOTO: VINCENT TULLO/NYTIMES
Before Le Creuset, most cookware came in shades of grey, black and brown.
But in 1925, two Belgian entrepreneurs – one an expert in cast iron, the other in vitreous enamel, made of heat-fired glass – built a foundry in the industrial north-eastern corner of France to deploy their new technology: coating cast iron with colourful enamel. (The enamelled cast-iron pots are all still made in the foundry, but other cookware and tableware are produced in Portugal, Thailand, China and elsewhere.)
A vintage advertisement for Le Creuset cookware. When the company was founded in 1925, the technique of bonding coloured enamel to cast iron was new.
PHOTO: LE CREUSET VIA NYTIMES
Their Le Creuset pots quickly caught on in Europe, thanks to their bright colours, durability and kitchen performance. The cookware began trickling into the US in the 1950s, but sales swelled in this century as new items were introduced.
A vintage advertisement for Le Creuset cookware. When the company was founded in 1925, the technique of bonding coloured enamel to cast iron was new.
PHOTO: LE CREUSET VIA NYTIMES
By expanding the company's palette from basics into pastels, neons and neutrals, and expanding the line from cookware into tableware, utensils and storage, Le Creuset has become a kitchen marketing powerhouse, with 90 stores in North America.
In 1988, five years after the first US store opened, the company was bought from the French owners by Mr Paul van Zuydam, a South African entrepreneur who pushed for the new strategy. Since the company is privately held, its revenues are not made public.
The company has produced collaborations with artists such as American interior designer Sheila Bridges, using her black Harlem Toile de Jouy pattern, and with brands such as Star Wars, Harry Potter and Hello Kitty. The US is its largest market, and Japan is not far behind.
It has also staged strategic drops of limited-run items, including a black heart-shaped Dutch oven that sells out as soon as it reappears, then shows up on resale sites such as Etsy and eBay.
A pot from Le Creuset's Harry Potter collection in Ms April Hershberger's kitchen. To keep its image up-to-date, Le Creuset has done collaborations with artists and brands like Hello Kitty, Star Wars and Harry Potter.
PHOTO: KRISTIAN THACKER/NYTIMES
After baker Jim Lahey's recipe for no-knead bread baked in a Dutch oven went viral in the early 2000s , Le Creuset produced a dedicated bread oven in 2022 that has become its most popular new piece in decades, said Ms Sara Whitaker, a director of US marketing for the company.
Pop-up factory sales, like a recent three-day event held in San Jose, California, generate huge lines and feverish social media posts, especially among buyers of VIP tickets that come with the opportunity to buy a US$50 (S$65) 'mystery box' that can be opened only after exiting the sale.
Each box contains at least US$350 – but sometimes up to US$1,000 – worth of overstocked and discontinued merchandise, and fans film suspenseful unboxing videos in the parking lots to post on TikTok.
Outside the factory sales and outlet stores, the pots can be very expensive. Retail prices go up to US$750 for the biggest, a Dutch oven called the 'goose pot', large enough to roast a 7kg bird.
In March, when Netflix debuted a new lifestyle show starring Meghan, Britain's Duchess of Sussex, among the many reasons some viewers called her 'unrelatable' were the white Le Creuset pots she used. Her cookware was singled out as being too expensive and too pristine, a criticism that some black women said was based in racist and dated assumptions.
Many of them, such as Ms Sharzae Cameron of Atlanta, made a point of showing off their collections on social media. 'We have had these for years now – this isn't new,' said Ms Cameron, 42, citing wedding registries, outlet stores and holiday gifts as opportunities to build a collection.
Ms Sharzae Cameron with her collection of Le Creuset's Flame cookware at her home in Locust Grove, Georgia, on March 31.
PHOTO: NYDIA BLAS/NYTIMES
Ms Robillard, the Flame collector, has well over 1,000 pieces in the original colour, including rarities like a 1955 Tostador, a kind of George Foreman Grill prototype by Raymond Loewy, the French-American industrial designer who also created the original Coca-Cola can, the Barcalounger and the Shell logo.
Ms Robillard, 73, has a contact in the Netherlands who scours flea markets for her and a dedicated room in her home in Apopka, Florida, for the collection, stored on industrial shelving that has to be bolted to the walls to support its weight.
Factory sales and new pieces hold no interest. Her current fixation is a vintage sangria pitcher that she once spotted on a resale site in South America. 'The hunt is always fun.' NYTIMES
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