Wood, I don’t think I need to work too hard to convince you, is a fairly amazing substance. It grows out of the ground and then becomes some of the most important things in the world: pencils, baseball bats, clogs, porch swings, campfires, crucifixes, tall shelves filled with books (which are also wood, if you squint a little). Solomon’s temple was wood; so was the Mayflower. So were Kane’s Rosebud and Prince’s guitar. As building materials go, wood’s durability-to-weight ratio is basically unmatched, thanks to the long, thin, hardy cell structure that helps trees withstand extreme weather conditions.
Wood does, however, have its limitations, and many of them are found in the kitchen. Processed wood warps, so it needs to be dried immediately after hand-washing (forget the dishwasher). Moisture, use, and the passage of time can turn its fibers brittle and dull, so experts recommend treating it regularly with oil. Obviously, it has been known to catch on fire. And though wood is naturally antimicrobial, if it splinters, those cozy organic crevices are the types of places where mold, mildew, and bacteria love to hang out. There’s a reason most workhorse bowls in many kitchens are ceramic, metal, or plastic.
None of this seems to matter to the people who recently bought KitchenAid’s Artisan Design Series Evergreen 5-Quart Tilt-Head Stand Mixer, which comes not with the brand’s standard stainless-steel bowl, but with a walnut one. The machine looks like something you might find in a glassy, aseptic mid-century-modern condo, maybe somewhere Nordic. KitchenAid, for its part, believes that it “brings the beauty of the forest home” and helps “makers” “feel like they’re out in the woods experiencing all the revitalizing elements.”
The bowl, because it is made out of wood, is a little particular. “Simply hand-wash and dry immediately” begins a video tutorial that the brand posted to YouTube, over peppy synths and a shot of an enviable copper-and-marble kitchen. Then the video reminds you to season the bowl regularly with walnut oil, food-safe mineral oil, and/or food-safe wood polish. When asked, in a Q&A section on the KitchenAid website, about whipping egg whites, a company rep warns, “It is not recommended to use the oiled wood bowl for whipped egg creations.”
This finicky, egg-hostile machine retails for $699 before tax, more than double the price of the least expensive KitchenAid stand mixer—even though it essentially does what all of KitchenAid’s other stand mixers do: provide a sturdy, stationary base and a powerful motor for mixing dough and batter, hands-free. Paying hundreds of dollars more for a tool that’s also more annoying may seem counterintuitive for those who cook primarily to stay alive. But of course, the Evergreen isn’t for those people. With this newest release, KitchenAid is acknowledging something that’s been true about its flagship product for years: The stand mixer doesn’t necessarily need to be easy to use, because it’s not only meant to be used. It’s also meant to be displayed.
In 1919, when KitchenAid first released the stand mixer, cooking—baking especially—was necessary drudgery; the stand mixer promised to make it easier. These days, though KitchenAid sells all kinds of other doohickeys, the stand mixer is still what the company is known for. When people say KitchenAid, they’re probably talking about the stand mixer, just the way Kleenex has become synonymous with facial tissue.
What has changed over the past century or so is the culture of cooking. For many people, cooking is now often entertainment—something they do to relax or show off, not just because they have to. The things we use to do it are, commensurately, symbols: evidence of a beautiful life. KitchenAid knows this. As the company’s marketing director said in 2007, “Research tells us that many less avid cooks simply want one on their countertop, largely because they like its design.” Indeed: “I NEED it,” one person wrote on X about the Evergreen. Added another, “I’d hit my great grandmama in the ankle w a razor scooter 89 times for a chance to get my hands on this bad boy.”
In anthropology, fetishism refers to the veneration of inanimate objects. Karl Marx borrowed the concept in coining the term commodity fetishism—the idea that certain goods, under certain conditions, can “transcend sensuousness.” They can take on value apart from and beyond their actual use or the labor required to produce them.
That’s one way to understand the Evergreen. Another is through the decline of the Instant Pot, the electric pressure cooker that sold millions of units before its parent company declared bankruptcy last year. Part of the problem, Amanda Mull wrote in The Atlantic, was that it worked too well; everyone who wanted one bought one, and then there were no more people to buy them.
KitchenAid is owned by the publicly traded appliance behemoth Whirlpool, which made about $19 billion in revenue last year, but it’s not hard to imagine its executives worrying about the same issue. Colors and materials aside, the basic design of a KitchenAid mixer hasn’t changed much since the mid-1930s; the one I have in my kitchen is not all that different from the one Julia Child had in hers. It’s a simple product that does what it is supposed to do—mix stuff—and is built to last. In a novelty-obsessed consumer culture, that’s not an asset for a company; it’s a liability.
There are two ways to solve this problem. One is to get people who already own stand mixers to buy more stand mixers. KitchenAid, and various other legacy makers of high-quality appliances, has recently adopted the “drop” model, which has helped the fashion industry turn even low-quality clothing into collectors’ items over the past few decades. The approach—release limited-edition or specialty products, sometimes in collaboration with beloved brands—alchemizes artificial scarcity into attention, and turns product releases into events. It also, crucially, encourages people to buy new versions of things they already have. This is why KitchenAid annually releases mixers in limited-edition colors, and why, a couple of years ago, the nearly century-old French enamelware brand Le Creuset made a Dutch oven that looks like Harry Potter: People buy them.
The other way to sell more stand mixers is to get more people in general to buy stand mixers—to rope in people who don’t need, or wouldn’t buy, a $700 kitchen tool in the first place. This is, to be clear, most people, even most people who bake. Unless you are regularly making bread or processing dense doughs, a $40 hand mixer will probably do the trick for brownies, cookies, and cakes.
But the KitchenAid mixer isn’t just a tool—it’s a statement, a talisman, a flex. Start looking for it in the background of celebrity home tours and cooking shows and you won’t be able to stop noticing it. It says I am together enough to take on ambitious baking projects, and I can afford an expensive appliance to help me. In that way, it has less in common with, say, a blender than with a completely different object: an engagement ring. Both are expensive status symbols generally acquired in the spring of one’s life; both are of limited use and enduring popularity; both are signifiers of domestic attainment; both are things people excitedly post to Instagram.
The Evergreen, according to at least one early review, does indeed work to make brownies. And in the grand scheme of troublesome developments in food culture, a person of means buying a fussy mixer that they don’t need is not that bad. But make no mistake about the message the Evergreen is sending as it sits atop your gleaming counters: In this kitchen we may not make the food, but we’re fine throwing down a lot of money to pretend.