S l e e p e r

"Hotel" Sheets Claim Another Victim

A reader writes:

Dear Sleeper:

I found sheets I love when I stayed at the Wynn Las Vegas, but they are not cheap: 700 thread count Supima cotton hotel linens, made in India. Is it bad that they are made in India? A fitted King sheet runs about 300 bucks. Is this a rip-off? Am I better going with Sferra or Scandia as far as sheets go?

Stephen

Dear Stephen:

Oh no! You're in the clutches of the Hotel Linens Monster, which is smooth to the touch, deadly on the wallet, and hunts for prey in the gift shops of upscale resorts.

Yet "Hotel" sheets' true allure is the hotel association. You sleep well there, yes. But mostly that's because you've stepped out of your life for a minute and into a very nice world where someone brings you a stirred manhattan when you push a button. The hotel would love you to think the sheets have the power, but in fact you'd probably be let down when you put them on the bed and weren't emotionally transported back to the Wynn. (I'll get to good hotel-style sheets in a minute.)

Supima is a name coined by a group of U.S. growers of pima cotton. It's the same thing as pima, with soft, strong, long-staple fibers. It's good cotton. But unless the package says 100% Supima cotton, there might be only a shred of it in there.

700 thread count? Doesn't mean a thing. These are no doubt soft sheets: The higher the thread count, the more a fabric drapes. But some of the best sheets I have ever slept on had a 200 to 400 TC. It's the quality of the thread that matters, not how many threads per square inch. Not to discredit your good taste — I only mean to decode the marketing.

India has a long and glorious history in weaving fabrics. Sheets made in India, no matter the price range, can be wonderful. They also make wretched pilly sheets in India, and everywhere else, including Italy.

Frankly, I always feel like kingsize sheets are a rip-off. They're one of those mysteriously expensive things on earth, like bras. Still, $300 is up there. Scandia's percale runs $200 for a king. That's better, but still high. It's possible to find terrific sheets for less money at, say, Bed Bath & Etc. if you're up for a hunt. Now that you know the kind of sheet you like, trust your hand in evaluating them.

I like Anichini's hotel sheets. They are soft, thick but not heavy, and just generally delicious. A whole king set will run you about $400, or half the price of those Wynn sheets.

Given how well Scandia pillows are made, I'd be inclined to try their sheets. If you're not ready for the whole investment, buy the pillowcases first and see how they feel and launder. As always, trust the hand, not the brand.

One more thing: hotels press their sheets. You could do that, or pay someone to. It could bring you one step closer to Vegas.

S.

A Review of Porthault Sheets

How close can you come to the rich? Can you come close enough to touch their sleeping faces?

Holly Golightly might have dreamed of D. Porthault. Poor Holly: You'll recall Truman Capote never even let her get to Tiffany's for breakfast. She was born on a dirt floor in Arkansas, moved to an army cot off Fifth Avenue, and, as far as we know, vanished into a bedroll in a tent someplace in Africa. But if there had been a happy ending, it might have involved a private chambre with Porthault sheets. Capote supposedly said the real difference between rich people and everyone else is their champagne and their D. Porthault linens. Audrey Hepburn herself surely napped on them.

Jackie Onassis loved them; Catherine Deneuve has them; also Gwyneth Paltrow. And, guess who.

"That's so much merde."

No, Holly, it's true.

(Miss Golightly would have loved the tech geeks!)

To see these sheets for yourself, take the 6 train uptown and ring the buzzer of the small, silent shop on 69th, just off Madison. Through the glass door, down the few white-carpeted steps, you'll find the linens and coverlets coveted by — well, not many people yet, owing to their price ($2,400 for a queen set, to start), the fact that you only hear about them via whispered confidences, and, surely, their... ugliness?

"Très fou!"

Listen, Holly, I am just not feeling it.

I squinted hard at the scatterings of pink hearts, the lurid, but not quite lurid enough, flowers. I love Billy Baldwin. I get Dorothy Draper. But I can't make sense of this. Maybe a Lilly Pulitzer dimmed by decades of four gimlets every afternoon of middle age?

It's impossible to imagine sleeping, napping, or even passing out on these sheets. They are as stiff as new thousand-dollar bills. They feel like they would crack if you lay down on them.

The heart softens at the idea of the orders for custom sets of linens ($4,000 and up) for palaces, chateaux, the White House, Balmoral, all handwritten in smudged pencil on yellowing tablets and sticking out of ancient file cabinets. Porthault is one of France's Entreprises du Patrimoine Vivant, or companies of living heritage. Its looms, in a tiny northern town, in humid toil, somehow manage to produce these sheets of unsurpassable smoothness and amazing hideousness!

And yet: K-mart, is what they bring to mind.

"Darling, you need a more expensive imagination!"

No, I don't. But anyway this tiny artisanal company has been bought by Brazos*, a private equity group headed by a coupla Americans. "Porthault," principal Bernard Carl says, "is one of the most massively underexploited brands out there." (Quel cowboy.) The seamstresses who embroider those yawny scalloped edges will soon be filing into a shiny new factory in Rieux.

Brazos wants to take sales from $7 million to $75 million in seven years. So get ready for sheetsploitation, Frette-style: "hospitality" quality linens at boutique hotels, sample sales with made-in-China Porthault baby bibs, which by the way already exist. "You have no idea how much people are willing to pay for the `Made In France' label," says Bernard Carl.

What do you think about that, Holly?

"Be anything but a coward, a pretender, an emotional crook, a whore: I'd rather have cancer than a dishonest heart. Which isn't being pious, just practical. Cancer may cool you, but the other's sure to. Oh, screw it, cookie — hand me my guitar."

I knew, in the end, that she wasn't the private equity type.

The irony of it all is that maybe Porthault will wind up with some better designs. Until that day, the verdict here must be: Fluff.

*In an odd twist, Brazos Group also now owns this writer's student loan.

Frette: Feh. End of Story.

Dear Sleepers:

There really is no reason to buy Frette.

After a bad experience with Frette's Brio sheets, manufactured strictly for hotels and sold at Bluefly and elsewhere on the Internet, I headed with a modicum of interest to the Frette sample sale. A brand with so many fans has to have some actual allure, right? Maybe the real sheets would win me over.

Uh, no. First of all, Frette's Hotel line, with its dully ladylike scalloped edge, clearly is meant to appeal to the "aspirational" buyer. It's their least espensive set, at around $420 retail ($250 at the sample sale).

Who is this aspirational sleeper? A Town & Country editorial assistant, on a wretched salary, smoking Black & Milds in her Upper East Side studio, with these thin, sheer sheets wrinkling beneath her thighs.

Oh. Girl. These are going to look terrible coming out of the dryer.

"They're only 200 thread count," a saleswoman offered defensively. There it is, the thread-count smokescreen. By now, I know you know it doesn't matter how many threads you weave into an inch of fabric. It matters what kind of threads you're weaving. Trust the "hand," the way the sheeting feels between your fingers. There are fine, silky 200 TC sheets. And then there are these.

In the more substantial, far pricer linens ($500 for a coverlet, and in the last hour of the sale??), the colors are bad, the colors are wrong, the colors are so prosaic. The editorial assistant has grown up and become Mrs. Goldman Sachs. She no longer works; she rises from a kingsize navy-and-camel bed each morning, checks The View, and — oh, hell, goes straight for the Old Granddad. There is no joy in Scarsdale.

Who would aspire to a pair of fifty-dollar cardboardy mules the color of mucilage? On a church-basement table. Does Frette understand the idea of a sample sale? Oh for Mella's, with it's cheap, swell flipflops.

On a recent visit to ABC's museum-worthy bedding department, I found Anichini sheets to be far superior. The hotel-style line was more substantial than Frette's, with a silker, softer hand. It wasn't any less expensive. But if you've got a classic sort of taste, and you (or the people perusing your wedding registry) are going to spring for this sort of thing, you should get what you pay for. There is no reason to be a fool for brand.

Sogni d'oro,
Sleeper

The Bedding Department at ABC

In the midst of Tropical Storm Mary, I hurried to Trader Joe's, near Union Square, to do a little stocking up. But as I was fighting my way to the Mighty Muffins and piling frozen things into my basket, I noticed the checkout line wound all the way around the store — twice. Clearly the sensible thing was toss the haricots back and walk to 19th and Broadway.

If you live in New York City, and you're reading this blog, probably you know that the third floor of ABC Carpet & Home is as thrilling as the textile exhibits at The Victoria and Albert Museum. Even if the sensible Sleeper buys most linens at Century 21, there's nothing like that place to erase the memory of a brawl over Two Buck Chuck or the I-live-in-Dumbo jackhammer jitters.

The soft and towering piles of linen, silk, cashmere. Anichini, Yves Dolorme (such bleedingly deep color), cottons from India, clean modern things, and even modestly priced Gaia organic sheets, all in a cathedral-like loft space. Maybe your Buddhist phase, like mine, has passed. Still, the sight of peach silk against grimy, rain-pelted loft windows makes you think renewal just might be possible. Your footfalls on the wood floors are muffled by the vast pillow department.

Of note yesterday: new sheets from textile designer John Robshaw, a former painter who once was Julian Schnabel's assistant. That is a $160 price tag on the brown-patterned queensize. That's what makes ABC ABC. That, and the $2800 Frette blanket that feels like very soft, light midmorning on heroin.
If you're drawn to sweet-ish patterns (I have been lately, against my will), you could visit Purl Patchwork, an excellent fabric shop on Sullivan Street, for a yard of Japanese fabric and have the dry cleaner make up something even more cunning, for cheap.

As a bonus, ABC's third floor also stocks the city's best selection of Abyss towels. I know of someone who threatened to take her ex to court over an orange bath sheet.

Linen Linens: Perfetto.

When all else goes wrong in a day, turn to the noble, the old, those things whose beauty and usefulness are intertwined.

Also, read about fabrics.

Why are bedclothes called "linens?" Because they originally were made from linen. You can still buy linen sheets. I was seduced by Cheryl Mendelson's description of them in her strangely beguiling book Home Comforts. The queen of fibers, she said. Great body. Crispness. The only thing for summer. (Prosecco for the bed?) The way they let air circulate around the sleeper, they way they don't cling. Prized through the ages for the way they come clean, cleaner than cotton...

Linen is made from the fibers of the flax plant. It is pretty much indestructible and does not lint or pill. Of course I had to have linen linens to know what sleeping in the 14th century was like, although I could only afford pillowcases. All the fine linen in the U.S. is imported, mainly from Belgium, Ireland, France, and Italy. It is apparently difficult and time consuming to make. (When I learned that, I was lost.)

Until they make phyllo pastry linens, then, or for the next twenty years, whichever comes first, I will enjoy these Italian cases.

Over a recent few hot nights here in New York, the fabric was a cool relief against our skin, even after just one washing. You can actually launder these sheets in the machine and even dry them on low in the dryer. But really I love them for how they look. Without ironing. Handsome, yes? Like the bed Juliet leapt out of.

Maybe someone will buy us the actual sheets. Mi piace molto l'idea.

Bed, Bath, and Betrayed!

I've been hearing from sleepers who ordered the plain-finish Hotel Fine Linens from BB&B and were bitterly disappointed. Buying sheets at BB&B is a tricky business. They sell a lot of different sheeting under the Hotel Fine Linens brand.

What does that mean? Packages that look exactly alike, with 600 thread count specs, actually contain different sheets. Look for the fine print: You want the ones made in India, not China. The Hotel sheets I tried and found to be amazing are the ones with a tiny checked pattern in the weave. They come in either bright white or cream.

The jacquard weave is too shiny a sateen, and it's ugly. The plain finish are a totally different sheet, scratchy and dull.

You should always go to the store (ugh, I know) to see what you're getting. As I've learned so painfully, it's hard to buy sheets online.

White Sheets + Black Dog?

Yes, certainly.

Next question, please.

Great Hotel-Style Sheets, for Cheap!

After my recent Frette nightmare, I wondered about the whole idea of "hotel" sheets. Why do we want our beds at home to be like hotel beds?

People think they want hotel sheets (and beds) because they tend to sleep really well in hotels, much better than at home. It's not the sheets, though. It's that you've left your clutter, obligations, possibly your kids, possibly possibly a noisy co-sleeper, possibly an enthusiastic pet, behind for a bit. A clean room! Which if you muss, someone else straightens. A number to call for a pot of coffee or a martini, a button to push if any little thing isn't to your satisfaction. And, yes, a very decent bed, and immaculately smooth sheets. Who wouldn't sleep well? Given a certain kind of hotel.

You can't duplicate that experience at home, although I did try once. I was, at age 7, besotted with Holiday Inn after we stayed there during a freak storm on a family camping trip. I loved the smell of the room, the way my Self seemed to disappear in it. Everywhere there were notes from the Holiday InnKeeper, reassuring us that the room was prepared specially for us (an Us who did not fight loudly or smell like onions, and who deserved a neatly folded toilet-tissue edge). I hopefully reproduced these little tent cards in my own bedroom after vigorously cleaning and dusting it. I never achieved the beguiling scent that I now know is a mix of old cigarette smoke and freon, and there was my dingy yellow "cloud" on the bed. Maybe there is something to the Hotel imprimatur.

To that end, Bed Bath & Beyond's Hotel Fine Linens are what those lousy Frette sheets wish they were. They're 600 thread count, which matters not a whit, but the weave is dense and luxurious. They're also sateen, but not unctuous; they just have a delicious smoothness to them. They're Egyptian cotton, made in India. If you want the full "hotel" experience, you'll have to iron them, but they look great out of the dryer. The cotton's long staple means it doesn't stick to your skin on humid nights. I mean, if you turn off your Hotel air conditioner for a minute to see what sleeping at home is like.

Incidentally I peeled off the many covers of the wonderful hotel bed above and discovered the sheets were made in India, had no name brand, and were exactly like these.

But don't buy them to turn your bedroom into a hotel; buy them because they are honest linens of superior quality and they'll make your bed a place you'll be grateful to slip into on its own merits.

Recently you could get a whole set, any size, for $69.99. If you have queensize pillows, buy an extra set of king cases. It's the Hotel line with the tiny checkered pattern in the weave. Best to visit the store to make sure you don't end up with the ugly jacquard finish or the plain-finish Made in China version, which is scratchy. No surprise.

There's No Way to Neatly Fold a Fitted Sheet, So Give Up or Haul Your Linens to the Laundress

Fitted sheets are the tectonic plates of the linen closet, just waiting to cause a fatal slide when you open the door. Callalillie's cat (above) gives a heartbreakingly confident folding lesson here, but it doesn't work, exactly.

How do the girls at the laundromat do it? Soon I will infiltrate the premises of Bleach House with my clever fabric softener camera.
— Wait. My sample (twin) sheet somehow has arranged itself into a facsimile of Callalillie's finished product. Not bad, but I couldn't pull it off again, and especially with a queen, and maybe I don't care.

Martha doesn't use fitted sheets. Oh yes, she says, if you must be so postwar-shortcut about things, here, at least don't make a balled-up mess of your elastic-and-cotton-blend [cotton blend!], here, have some incomprehensible folderol.

Speaking of the war, I bet I know who folds fitted sheets flat and perfectly.

No! Don't Buy These Frette Sheets

You've been waiting for the results of the Frette test. Should anyone with sense shell out for these linens? That depends, as Bill Clinton might say, on what you mean by "these linens."

Out of the package, the Brio sheets I purchased from Bluefly were silky, but oddly sheer and lightweight. I had expected a hefty bundle. Still, ever faithful (pessimism does not make for good sleep), I laundered them. Nice snowy whiteness going around in the dryer. Lovely anticipation. What would they be like?

The linens dried quickly, even on the recommended low setting. Ironing is suggested, but that wasn't going to happen — nor is it ever going to happen in my household, however much I actually like the idea of sprinkling sheets off the line and giving them a good steam. Still, the wrinkles aren't bad. They give the bed a we're-off-on-holiday look. Very back-from-the-beach-in-an-hour.

Strange to say, though, the sheeting reminds me of the tissuey, disposable headrest covers on airline seats. There's a whiff of hospital gown about them.

Could they be fakes? I wrote to Bluefly, who said the company "guarantees the authenticity of products available on our site." They maintain strict control of the supply chain, they insist, to be sure all their goods are the real thing.

Could there be a different explanation? I spoke with Frette, who said products from the Hospitality Division are made for major hotels and are of a "different quality" than the Home line. The Hospitality sheets are made in Italy, as are the Home and Couture lines, but Frette couldn't confirm that they were loomed at the same place or made from the same cotton.

Here's how it works: Third parties (like Bluefly) buy these sheets from liquidators who coordinate with hotels that, say, ordered too many sheets. Discounters may even buy them from Frette, if Frette discontinued a pattern or made the sheets a half-inch too narrow or for some other reason couldn't sell them to the hotel.

If you slaver over brands, you may be seduced by the Frette name because upscale hotels, and even major chains (such as Marriott) with boutique properties, claim Frette linens on their Web sites and in ads by dint of these "different quality" sheets. So if you thought your honeymoon suite came with $1500 linens, you were probably wrong. Sorry for the wake-up call. (Were you really thinking of sheets on your wedding night?)

How did they feel? Not terrible. Pleasant, even. A dry hand that would be nice on a summer night. Were they transportive? No. Were they in any way worth the money, even at less than half price ($250)? No. Sheets from Frette's actual Home line might be, but who knows? Maybe you know. The Hotel Collection, a percale (as opposed to the far more expensive sateen), is $360. I'll get back to you on those if I ever try them, or if I am seduced by a Frette sample sale back home in New York.

The official verdict: Frette is Fluff.

There's no call to be sad. Dwell sheets at Bluefly are excellent for summer — papery and crisp — and only about $100 for a set.

Looking out for your well-being,
Sleeper