Waking Up to Luxury
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.
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% cotton sheets sell for $140 for a queen flat sheet and $175 for a king flat.
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 & 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.”
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.
“We have had a lot of success from our hospitality division,” says Filippo Arnaboldi, director of marketing for Frette, which has supplied sheets to the Vatican. “People sleep in the sheets, and then they really want this kind of product. This is the most important way we’re getting recognition in this country and all over the world.”
Top hotels routinely get requests from clients to buy sheets like those in which they’ve slept--sometimes along with the rest of the bed, including the mattress, pillows and comforter. Some, such as the Ritz Carlton Pasadena, sell sheet sets in their gift shops.
“I absolutely believe that hotels play a part in educating the public in terms of what’s available in high-quality linens,” says Mary Shriver, director of public relations for the Four Seasons Hotel in Los Angeles, where Frette sheets are used in its three most exclusive suites. “It’s one of the things that gives that dream quality to staying at a luxury hotel.”
At the Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills, executive assistant manager Ellis O’Connor says, “an awful lot of emphasis is placed on the bed, and there’s a lot of research that goes into creating a complete bed set that’s going to give someone an unbelievable night’s sleep.”
The hotel used to use Frette sheets in all its rooms until it decided to have custom sheets made elsewhere, to offer something more exclusive: “We wanted to have control over what the guest was sleeping on,” O’Connor says, “something that they couldn’t get anywhere else.”
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. The problem is those things are technical issues that don’t translate to the customer very well.”
Sferra hasn’t been immune to the fascination with counting threads. Last year, the company introduced its sateen weave 1,020-thread-count cotton sheets “because we found one of the mills could make this fabrication, and the American market is looking for the next best thing in terms of thread count,” Piccininni says. “This is the pinnacle of what luxury is all about. For us it was the icing on the cake, and it gave us a lot of notoriety.”
At the luxury-linens level there is no shortage of snob appeal, which is one reason they’re so sought after.
“It’s wonderful for people personally, and also for their egos,” Allem says. “We live in an ego- and sexually driven society, so people want to be in the most beautiful linens. It sounds materialistic, but that’s the market, that’s the story. People like to know they have beautiful things around them.”
Stephanie Gale, manager of the Beverly Hills Frette store, says “special installations” for their linens are not uncommon. “We’ll work with an interior designer, and when a bed is installed in a home we’ll go with our ironing board and iron the sheets. People want the ultimate.”
The ironing factor may keep some potential buyers away from luxury linens, although those able to pay such high prices probably won’t be doing the pressing themselves. Luxury sheet care shouldn’t be intimidating, say the experts, and ironing isn’t required, although to obtain the crispness fine linens are known for, it is recommended. “The bed is no longer a separate entity in the room; it’s a part of it,” Stoddard says. “If you like the soft palette on the walls, you can have it in your sheets, too. The glamour boudoir look is very big right now, and everyone is turning toward that lovely 1940s Hollywood glamour and wanting a sexy bedroom. So we’re seeing silks and luscious satins, crystal lamps and mirrored furniture, a return of elegance. I think people want to wake up feeling like a movie star.
“There’s nothing like a good night’s sleep in your own bed,” she says. “When you get home and crawl into your bed, that’s the way you know you’re home. The importance of that will never change.”
