When Jonathan Anderson made his Dior womenswear debut in Paris last month, the invitation raised eyebrows: a porcelain plate, boxed and affixed with chestnuts. Not your usual Parisian gilt-edged stationery. The chestnut—nutrient dense, hardy, quietly elegant—is a symbol with global resonance. It connotes wisdom for the Celts, fortune for Italians and Japanese, and fertility for Koreans. Call it what you will, but it’s a global talisman. Maybe for Anderson, it was a message: something ancient, resilient, and good to come.
And yet, in everyday life, the chestnut doesn’t quite get its flowers. Its color is one of the more drab shades of brown. It’s the nut that grandma set out in a bowl that no one touched. It’s a lyric in a Christmas carol. But lately, this humble nut is having a renaissance. Chefs, bartenders, and even spas are reimagining it.
“I built a frozen Italian foods brand, worked in hospitality, and somehow ended up back in the world of trees,” said Sasha Sherman, founder of The Great Chestnut Experiment—part farming project, part reforestation effort, part cultural movement. Their chestnut gift boxes are chic and tactile, complete with roasting instructions and a handy scoring tool. “I remember the first time someone instructed me on how to plant a chestnut seedling: You tamp down the roots, kiss the top of the seedling, and imagine this tree growing tall enough to share a family for generations.”
