Saturday, December 28, 2002
Higher-end bedding has surged in popularity.
LOS ANGELES TIMES
Creating a luxury bed used to mean buying some designer percale sheets, a fluffy comforter, a few pillows, and calling it a night. Only royalty and the super-rich could afford to sleep between the finest cotton satiny sheets.
No more. An increasing desire for special and different bed linens has spawned new levels of top-quality sheets in a range of prices. Choices have greatly expanded for those with lofty budgets, with fine-linen companies offering more collections and hiring designers to produce new looks in bold colors and contemporary prints.
The surge in popularity of luxury bed linens started about a decade ago, in step with an intensified interest in home furnishings. According to Jerri Koplowitz, luxury-linen buyer for Macy's West, the category has expanded to include higher thread counts and jacquards that create a tone-on-tone pattern via the weave. Extravagant, imported textiles have fostered a whole new lexicon for American shoppers who want to indulge themselves while they sleep.
Widely available
Long-established European brands such as Pratesi, Yves Delorme, Porthault and Frette that once catered mostly to royals and the extremely wealthy now make their wares available in boutiques worldwide, and terms such as "thread count," "sateen weave" and "double hemstitch" trip off the tongues of people who once never thought beyond flat and fitted.
Interior designer Charles Allem describes his nightly dip into Pratesi this way: "I jump onto those pillows and hear the crackle of the starch, and it's the most wonderful feeling after a tortuous day at the office. I feel like a prince."
For those with bottomless bank accounts, there are sets that retail for more than $1,000. The 111-year-old Italian linen company Sferra Bros.' Mellissimo line boasts 1,020-thread-count cotton sheets. One queen flat sheet retails for about $500, a king for $560.
Frette, a 150-year-old company headquartered in Milan, now has a Hotel line of 200-count, Egyptian cotton sheets that sells via the Chambers bed and bath catalog, with queen sets going for $255 and kings for $285. Macy's Charter Club label's hotel hemstitch 500-thread count, 100 percent cotton sheets sell for $140 for a queen flat sheet and $175 for a king flat.
Customized
Linens can also be customized. Most of the top French and Italian companies are happy to work with individuals or interior designers to create the perfect color or pattern to match wallpaper, a company logo, or, in the case of a certain legendary actress, lavender eyes.
When it comes to sheets, cotton is the preferred fiber -- Egyptian cotton, to be precise, with longer filaments that produce softer fabrics. Some collections also offer imported linen and silk. And then there are the accessories -- cashmere throws, duvets, fake fur coverlets, down-filled pillows, all of which can extend the price tag into the tens of thousands of dollars.
A number of factors have converged to raise the bar on quality and cost.
"The bedroom has a much more important place in the home," says Brooke Stoddard, style editor of House & amp; Garden magazine. "It's a place of retreat, and with the hectic lifestyles that people lead, we're turning beds into mini-retreats. Decorators are using the best new luxury linens to decorate the room, as well as finding the right lighting and the best beside table."
Designers
Stoddard also credits designers such as Ralph Lauren in the late '80s and Calvin Klein in the mid-'90s for bringing attention to the bed with their fashionable collections. They "woke people up to the idea of bed wardrobes when they saw what beautiful linens were available. People realized that they could change their bed and have fun with it and build a collection over time."
Globe-trotting lifestyles have brought more people into fine hotels, where they often have their first exposure to high-quality linens. It used to be de rigueur for royals and old-money types to bring along their favorite linens when they traveled, and there's a small percentage who still do. But today, since most great hotels use the finest linens, it's visitors who want to take those home.
Most sheet buyers will, at some point, deal with thread count, which has become probably the single biggest boost to high-end sheets. To fire up interest in bedding and give certain brands a more exclusive cachet, some companies began boasting about their thread count -- literally, how many threads per inch of fabric. Consumers were taught that higher thread counts denoted better quality, with a 250-count better than a 180-count sheet. But in Europe, thread counts aren't even discussed.
"What has ended up happening is that the consumer has become locked into the thread-count thing," says Jo Ann Piccininni, director of product development for Sferra Bros. "In the final analysis, it's also about the fineness of the yarn and where it comes from. It all sounds minute, but it does make a difference.