When Jonathan Anderson made his Dior womenswear debut in Paris final month, the invitation raised eyebrows: a porcelain plate, boxed and affixed with chestnuts. Not your traditional Parisian gilt-edged stationery. The chestnut—nutrient dense, hardy, quietly elegant—is a logo with world resonance. It connotes knowledge for the Celts, fortune for Italians and Japanese, and fertility for Koreans. Name it what you’ll, but it surely’s a worldwide talisman. Possibly for Anderson, it was a message: one thing historical, resilient, and good to come back.
And but, in on a regular basis life, the chestnut doesn’t fairly get its flowers. Its shade is likely one of the extra drab shades of brown. It’s the nut that grandma set out in a bowl that nobody touched. It’s a lyric in a Christmas carol. However currently, this humble nut is having a renaissance. Cooks, bartenders, and even spas are reimagining it.
“I constructed a frozen Italian meals model, labored in hospitality, and by some means ended up again on the planet of bushes,” mentioned Sasha Sherman, founding father of The Nice Chestnut Experiment—half farming undertaking, half reforestation effort, half cultural motion. Their chestnut present packing containers are stylish and tactile, full with roasting directions and a useful scoring instrument. “I keep in mind the primary time somebody instructed me on how you can plant a chestnut seedling: You tamp down the roots, kiss the highest of the seedling, and picture this tree rising tall sufficient to share a household for generations.”