April Hershberger isn’t the only collector of Le Creuset cookware, with so many works that they can’t be counted. But she may be the only one to build the entire house around a house: the crimson, nine-point oval Dutch oven she received was a gift for the 2006 wedding.
This sparked obsession.
Her kitchen stove is the heart of a house in a restored barn in southeast Pennsylvania, customizing her Le Creuset cherry red pot, bake dishes, pitchers, plates and more. Ms. Hershberg, 42, also used mustard yellow and sunflower seed yellow, Mediterranean and Caribbean blue, forest green and lemon green fragments that she often arranges and rearranges into stripes, swirls and rainbows and records on Instagram.
“I can never promise a color,” she said.
Like Hermès and Chanel, Le Creuset (according to the official video, Luh Cruh-Say, meaning the French crucible) is a traditional Gaul brand that flourishes in the modern global market, by becoming collectible while retaining its functionality. Collectors have turned what once was a niche brand into something near-cultivated and timelessly attracted with new lines, colors and shapes.
Some stick to a family of colors, such as pastels; others focus on individual items throughout the spectrum, such as trivia or pie birds.
“As Aries, fire and flames speak to me,” said purist Arlene Robillard, who owns one of the world’s largest collections of the company’s original colors: Volcanic powder, an American orange-red ombré sold in flames.
Last week, to celebrate its 100th anniversary, Le Creuset released its latest color, Flamme Dorée (Golden Flame). It is close to the original tones and adds a golden glitter, such as expensive cosmetics or lenses from Goldschläger. A few months ago, the Le Creuset Lovers Group on Facebook, with 97,000 members, fell into crazy speculation after seeing new shades at an unspecified Williams Sonoma store.
“I have a great relationship with the staff, one showed me A in the new spark flame!” anonymous member posted. (Do is a collector’s shorthand for Dutch ovens.)
Before Le Creuset, most cookware was shaded in gray, black and brown. But in 1925, two Belgian entrepreneurs (one was a cast iron expert and the other was glass enamel made of hot burning glass) built a foundry in the northeast corner of French industry to deploy their new technology: painted cast iron coated with colored enamel. (Enameled cast iron pots are still made in foundries, but other cookware and cutlery are produced in Portugal, Thailand, China and elsewhere).
Their Le Creuset pots were quickly captured in Europe due to their bright colors, durability and kitchen performance. The cookware began dripping into the United States in the 1950s, but sales in the century have expanded with the introduction of new items, which clearly shows that fans can induce purchases more cookware than they actually need.
By expanding the company’s palette from basics to pastels, neons and neutrals, and expanding its product line from cooking utensils, cutlery and storage storage to cutlery, Le Creuset has become a kitchen marketing powerhouse with 90 stores in North America. (In 1988, five years after the first U.S. store opened, the company was purchased from French owners by South African entrepreneur Paul van Zuydam, who pushed for a new strategy. Since the company is privately held, its revenue is not public.)
The company uses her Black Harlem Toile de Jouy model to work with artists like Sheila Bridges and has partnered with brands like Star Wars, Harry Potter, and Hello Kitty. (The United States is its largest market, not far from Japan.) It also runs strategically limited-edition operations, such as a black heart-shaped Dutch oven, which will be sold once it reappears and then appears at resale locations such as Etsy and eBay.
The recipe for snow-free bread baked by Jim Lahey in a Dutch oven became popular in the early 2000s (and reappeared during the pandemic), and Le Creuset produced a dedicated bread oven in 2022, and the company has become the most popular new work for decades.
The pop-up factory sales, like last week’s three-day event in San Jose, California, have sent huge lines and avid social media posts, especially among VIP ticket buyers, with the opportunity to buy the $50 “Mysterious Box” that will only be open after exiting the sale. Each box contains at least $350 (but sometimes up to $1,000) worth of sale and discontinued merchandise, while fans filmed suspense unboxing videos in the parking lot for posting on Tiktok.
Outside of factory sales and sales stores, these pots can be very expensive: the largest retail price is $750, and the Dutch oven is called a “goose pot” enough to roast a 15-pound bird.
Last month, when Netflix debuted on Meghan’s new lifestyle show for Meghan starring Meghan, the reason some viewers called her “untransportable” was the white le Creuset pot she used. Her cookware was chosen to be too expensive and too primitive, a criticism some Black women say, based on the assumptions of racism and dates. Many of them, such as Sharzaè Cameron of Atlanta, have proposed showing off their collection on social media.
“We’ve had years of history – it’s nothing new,” said Ms. Cameron, 42. (Meghan told me in an interview at her home last month that anyone would think it’s ridiculous for modern black women to use only traditional cast iron skillets.)
Starting from the 1960s, two ideal domestic empires were built on a solid Le Creuset platform: Williams-Sonoma on the West Coast and pottery barns on the east. In 1965, my parents (Hanna, 82, and Jeffrey Moskin, 83, bought the pot they still use every day.
When they got married that year, both wanted to escape their family’s culinary claustrophobia: my mother from a strict kosher home in Brooklyn (Jelly Calf’s Feet, Margarine) and my father from a suburb on Long Island (Orange Soda) (Orange Soda, Frozen Vegetables). His father was in the restaurant supply business, so my parents got married with a good start: a huge black garland restaurant and thick aluminum frying pan.
But it wasn’t until they had Le Cruz pots, flame-colored Dutch ovens and heavy pots that they felt on the way, which helped them master the recipes of Julia Child, Richard Olney and Elizabeth David. (At the time, everyone wanted to be a French home cook, preferably a French home cook living in the countryside.)
Salton Yogurt Maker and installations like Romertopf Terra-Cotta casserole have passed through their kitchens, but 60 years later, no other pots have been added to their shelves. That’s why I didn’t know that there was no such a non-stick pan until I graduated from college.
Lynne Rossetto Kasper, 82, a culinary historian, cooking teacher and retired podcast host, said she started using the pots once she arrived in the United States because their weight made their weight dark brown ingredients without scorching and cooked in low-cooked ones.
“It’s not easy to find something you can stew or make slow stir-fry and get the right flavor,” she said, because even the top-made cookware in the United States, like Farberware, is mostly lightweight aluminum. Her two well-used Le Creuset Dutch ovens will be auctioning off her cooking collection next week, but she said: “They are just a few of many people I have lived in my life.”
Hailey Sipe, the product director at a tech company that lives in Orange County, California, called me from the road Thursday and published a report from a pop-up sale in San Jose. She and two friends from the UCLA MBA program drove 300 miles north after get off work Wednesday, then woke up early to search for routes and parking.
Ms. Sipe, 34, already owns some colorful flower pots handed down from her mother and sister, but has built a collection with neutral results since her marriage last year, including oyster grey, sea salt light blue and brioche beige.
Her 90-minute shopping slot gift is the bread oven. (In a 120-minute interval, slots are interlaced to give the crew a chance to order orders from the chaos.) “There is a crazy sprint at the beginning because the strategy is to grab everything you might want and figure it out later,” Ms. Sipe said.
To open their mysterious box, three friends meet with other attendees in a nearby parking lot, collectors prepare barter and bring folding tables that can sometimes be kept at home. The process, she said, was an emotional roller coaster: the first box contained a perfect set of white Dutch ovens, but not hers. The next person is mainly chiffon light pink, which is especially disliked for cooking utensils. Her own box was filled with flames. “Orange is not in my palette,” she stressed.
Nevertheless, Ms. S. Sipe brings a black Braiser, a Rhone (wine-colored) pot and 10 other pieces for about $1,400 that she will use, trade or as a gift.
And a bread oven? Except for the flames, the entire spectrum was sold out. (Ms Whitaker of Le Creuset said Flame’s popularity is declining and the company “cancels” its production.)
The original colors of Ms. Robillard are available in more than 1,000 pieces, including a rare item like the 1955 Tostador, a George Foreman grill prototype by French American industrial designer Raymond Loewy, who also created the original Coca-Cola can, which is the original Coca-Cola from Barcalounger and Shell Logo.
Ms. Robillard, 73, searched in the Netherlands with her flea market for her special room in her home in Apopka, Florida for the collection and stored on industrial shelves, which must be bolted to a wall to support her weight.
Factory sales and new products are not interested; her current fix is the old-fashioned sangria pitcher she once found at a South American resale location. “Hunting is always fun.”
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