How the lobster became an unlikely status symbol — and a ‘cultural icon’

By Jacqui Palumbo, CNN

(CNN) — Despite its shiny red exoskeleton and reputation as a bug of the sea, the lobster — though far from the world’s strangest delicacy — has long reigned as an unlikely luxury staple. As well as a high-ticket menu item, the crustacean is also a longstanding symbol of opulence in art and fashion, reaching cultural status beyond other culinary indulgences like caviar or pricey cuts of steak.

On menus, the aquatic arthropod can reach sky-high prices: a blue lobster paella for $230 in Las Vegas, a lobster tower for nearly $700 in Toronto, or giant salted egg lobster for $460 in Vietnam. On high-fashion runways, Schiaparelli, Dior, Thom Browne and Maison Margiela have all paid tribute to its pinching claws and curved tail — and celebrities including Zendaya, Lady Gaga and Chloë Sevigny have all embraced the look. In art, lobsters have symbolized longevity in Edo-period Japanese prints, power in Flemish paintings and sex organs in the surrealist genre.

Lobsters inhabit oceans all around the world and are desired widely, with Asia’s appetite, in particular, surging its multibillion-dollar global market value, according to data analysis firm Markets and Research. On New England’s coasts, demand — and cost — for the crustacean has continued to grow as lobsters have drastically declined in New England’s warming waters in recent years, according to the non-profit local media outlet Maine Public.

But lobsters haven’t always been considered a status symbol. Across the Internet, they are often framed as a rags-to-riches story, with the factoid shared widely that they used to be grub for prisoners and enslaved persons in colonial America. And though it’s true that New England’s plentiful lobsters were little valued by British settlers, that hardly captures the full history of the sea creature, which has been eaten for at least 250 million years, as the author Elisabeth Townsend’s book “Lobster: A Global History” charts. From the large-clawed American species served on buns to the coveted spiny lobster in Japan; from the rock lobsters enjoyed in South Africa and Australia (and name-dropped by The B-52s), to langoustines — or prawns — exalted in French cooking, lobsters have a long and varied culinary history across the world.

“The world’s love affair with lobster began out of necessity,” Townsend writes. “Humans needed to eat and the crustacean was often within easy reach…. But the shellfish eventually became more than just grub — its status shifted from vital protein to cultural icon.”

From ‘survival fare’ to delicacy

In its earliest history, going back to the Stone Ages, lobster was considered “survival fare,” according to Townsend, for the same reasons it’s valuable today: lobster is difficult to gather and transport since it decays rapidly once killed. But lobsters were also revered at points in the ancient world, too, appearing both on a 15th-century BC Egyptian temple and an approximately 1st-century BC mosaic floor in Pompeii — the latter because Ancient Romans considered it a “treat,” Townsend explained. Similarly, lobster motifs on ceramics by Peru’s Moche culture, from between the 1st and 8th centuries, suggested its value within their coastal communities.

Across eras and regions, lobster was consumed in different ways. Its simplest preparations were boiled or smoked — or baked, as in coastal Native American communities long before New England became known for its seafood-filled clambakes. By the time Europe entered the Middle Ages, cookbooks were suggesting dishes such as spiced lobster soup, Townsend writes, though the ingredient was pricey due to transportation costs.

As maritime trade began reshaping the world, lobster became a key ingredient for aristocratic Europeans who served feasts stacked with exotic global ingredients to flex their wealth and power. In the 16th and 17th centuries, Flanders, where the port city of Antwerp became a center of colonial trade, art reflected the same desire to accumulate an impressive array of goods.

“There was a larger movement within still-life paintings from relatively modest scenes in Northern Europe to much more luxurious, elaborate ones,” said Christopher D.M. Atkins, the director of the Center for Netherlandish Art at MFA Boston, in a phone call with CNN. “Earlier, Dutch painters would depict relatively simple meals: herring, cheese a glass of beer.” As the region grew richer, though, so did its painted subjects. “You begin to see things with fruits and game, wine and elaborate glassware, imported porcelain and luxury goods.”

It’s then that lobsters begin to arrive — representing the “wealth of the sea”, Atkins explained. A 1565 painter Willem Kalf, for instance, shows a lobster arranged alongside a gleaming buffalo drinking horn, fine glassware and a decorative carpet.

Lobsters may have also been appealing to artists of the era as a bright splash of color on the canvas, he said, or for its contribution to sumptuous, contrasting textures — a smooth crustacean shell next to a peeled lemon rind or transparent glass, for instance — all in service of the illusionary power of the composition.

“It gave painters the opportunity to show off,” he said.

A scandalous symbol

But if Dutch art gave the lobster an important supporting role, the surrealist movement in the mid 20th-century offered it a chance to be a star, thanks in large part to a now-infamous dress born of creative partnership of Dalí and Italian fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli.

Schiaparelli “felt connected to the movement because she had a lot of fantasy and whimsy (in her designs),” explained curator Marie-Sophie Carron de la Carrière, who organized a 2022 show of the couturier’s work at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris.

By the 1930s, when the pair struck up a friendship, the lobster had already become a mainstay in fine dining. The golden age of French cooking — haute cuisine — had dreamt up elaborate ways of preparing the shellfish with truffles and champagne, while new-monied industrialists in New York enjoyed it at the city’s finest restaurants.

But now was time for the lobster’s entrance into haute couture as well. Dalí had already introduced the lobster as an erotic symbol in his 1936 surrealist object “Lobster Telephone,” and the following year, Schiaparelli offered him a new kind of blank canvas through an off-white high-waisted silk organza gown — one of several collaborations between the pair. Dalí’s print on the dress depicted a swooping lobster with parsley scattered around it. (His desire to add a flourish of mayonnaise is said to have been nixed by Schiaparelli.)

Carron de la Carrière, emphasized just how suggestive the now-iconic dress was. With the lobster featured twice, appearing to travel down the front of the dress and then up the back, “What was happening between?” she asked.

When twice-divorced American socialite Wallis Simpson donned the dress in Vogue just days before marrying Prince Edward, Duke of Windsor — who had shocked Britain by abdicated his crown for their tumultuous union — it only added to the highly public scandal, the curator explained.

Since then, the lobster has become a touchstone in fashion and art history and is regularly resurfaced, from Anna Wintour wearing a take on it from Prada to the 2012 Met Gala to Zendaya sporting a referential skirt from Schiaparelli — under creative director Daniel Roseberry — last year. (Roseberry’s predecessor at the fashion house, Bertrand Guyon, had also re-envisioned the piece in a gown for the label’s Spring 2017 Haute Couture collection, to mark its 80th anniversary.) With the shellfish’s place cemented in both the culinary world and visual culture, it isn’t likely to fall out of favor soon as a signifier of status and style — though as the changing climate endangers its habitat, we should sincerely consider the lobster.

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