The Linen Doctor

When the Obama family starts living the in the White House, they will have quite a few rooms to consider redoing…the Executive Mansion has 16 bedrooms, most notably the White House Master bedroom, but also the famous Lincoln and Queens bedrooms, as well as a number of less formally named rooms…there are 35 bathrooms in the White House, but unlike the bedrooms in the Mansion, none of the bathrooms have official names…the State Dining Room seats up to 140…so that’s a lot of new linens…by the way, the White House also has 412 doors, 147 windows, eight staircases, three elevators, and one bowling alley…I came across all of this data in the November 24 issue of Home Furnishings Now, one of the trade publications we regularly read.

It’s always exciting to go New York for any reason and today I’m off to New York for the annual gift show, which includes a home section. All of our main vendors will be showing either at the Javits, the Piers, in permanent showrooms.

Besides seeing new introductions, it’s always great to see the people you talk to on the phone all year long, as well as comparing notes with other retailers. This year should be especially interesting since most vendors and retailers consider this past year as being a very challenging one and I am curious to see how they handled it.

The number one item on my shopping list is organic sheets that really feel good. I have seen plenty of samples, but none that really compares with usual quality of our stocked cotton sheets, especially in the high thread counts. Sferra has promised a 560-count organic sheet that has me excited. I’m also looking for some geometric prints or patterns rather than the usual florals and anything else that excites me. And anything in bright, cheerful colors.

I’ll also be checking out other retail stores and vendor displays to get see how they merchandise their products. I’ll let you know in a few days while I am actually there the most exciting things I have seen.

When I go to this show a few times every year, it’s more to look for display ideas and see design and color trends that are developing. When Shelley, the home accessory and gift buyer, and I went on July 27, we specifically went looking for things to go with the sheet pattern, “Hera” by Yves Delorme, that we will be featuring in our Christmas window.

We always try to do Christmas windows that are a little different, and had already decided on using “Hera,” which features peacock feathers (see accompanying picture) as the centerpiece. We found some feather trees and peacock feather wreaths as well as other gift items with the peacock theme. It’s always interesting to start planning for and getting enthusiastic about Christmas in July, but retailers must address this early or we won’t get the products we want for that most important selling season.

This gift show was a lot smaller this year, with fewer vendors showing and fewer retailers attending. Fewer vendors meant less selection and what we did see wasn’t all that exciting and fairly conservative and dull. I have heard that this has also been the trend at other gift shows in the U.S. and reflects the troubled economy. We have been told that the next gift show in San Francisco would combine the North and South halls at the Moscone Center, which will hurt attendance even further.

I will be attending the New York Gift Show next week and will be interested to see the trends and attendance there. The New York show is by far the biggest gift show in the United States and includes a huge home section. Hopefully we will see some exciting new merchandise there, especially bedding and linens, the staple of the business in our store.

I agree with most people that the clothes in the movie Sex and the City are fabulous, but the bed linens are really boring.

We get to see two sets of Carrie’s sheets. The first one, early in the movie, shows a plain white top sheet plain white with three lines of blue embroidery. The pillow case has just one line. Surprising that she would buy a set with the case not matching the sheet. Why not compromise and get Sferra’s “Grande Hotel” with two lines of blue on both? The second set, seen much later in the movie, is just plain white. Plain white is also the sheet of choice for Miranda and Steve — more boredom. No way to tell the quality or thread count, sateen or percale.

Charlotte and Harry at least have a 1” appliquéd border, like Matouk’s “Lowell,” on their sheets, and their daughter has plain white in her very pink room. There is also some color and pattern on the bed where the four girls are hanging out the night before the wedding. We see a silk or sateen sham in gold and a pillow with an ethnic pattern being tossed around, similar to Yves Delorme’s “Serail’ a pattern made in 2007, discontinued this year.

The guys have more interesting sheets. Mr. Big has a set with 1” appliqué on the face and on the edge of the sham, black on grey, similar to Matouk’s Legato, which has three rows rather than two, sitting in front of plain light grey solid. At least I think they’re light grey. They could also be white, hard to tell. He also has a silk quilt with rows of quilting near the edge, like Kumi Kookoon’s “Classic Silk Throw.”

Out in California, we get to see two of Samantha’s hunk’s sheets. The first is a rather conservative tone-on-tone small plaid, like Christian Fischbacher’s “Batist Web.” The second set looks like zebra stripes, except blue on a white ground. We don’t have any pattern like that at Scheuer Linens but they must be out there somewhere. Too bad we don’t get to see any of Samantha’s bed linens since I suspect they would be more interesting than plain white.

Given the cost of the clothes and accessories, it is really kind of surprising that the girls don’t make more of an effort to have their beds look a little bit more interesting. It’s certainly not the cost since plain white sheets can also be very expensive. In a film where the clothes tell us so much about each character, why is the bedding so nondescript?

Maybe they don’t have time to shop for bed linens or maybe they just don’t think it’s that important, which is surprising given how much importance they put on the sex part of Sex and the City.