The Linen Doctor

Customers who purchase organic cotton products often ask about environmentally friendly cleaning, both at home at the local dry cleaners. We recommend Holiday Cleaners, 1820 Polk St., San Francisco since they are one of five GreatEarth® San Francisco dry cleaners listed on the GreenEarth Cleaning website, www.greenearthcleaning.com.

A GreenEarth® Cleaning may be the friendliest dry cleaning process ever. No hazardous chemicals are used, so there’s nothing to dirty the air, contaminate the soil, or pollute the water. And unlike perchloroethylene, which is used by most dry cleaners and can be very hard on fabric, The GreenEarth process cleans with pure liquid silicone, which can be safely disposed of.

Pure liquid silicone is, in essence, liquefied sand. This is the same safe, natural sand the earth has been creating for over six billion years. It is chemically inert, meaning it won’t interact with fabric. It just carries the detergent to your clothes and then carries away the dirt and oil. Whites won’t yellow and colors won’t fade, no matter how often they are cleaned.

For home cleaning of fabrics, we recommend and sell Le Blanc’s® Linen Wash products, which includes: Linen Wash®, DownWash®, Towel Wash, Silk & Lingerie Wash, and Laundry Wash. All of these products are known for removing extremely difficult stains from luxury fabrics without the use of harmful chemicals. They contain no bleach, no caustics, and no phosphates; all are biodegradable and sulphate-free. LinenWash’s neutral pH balance makes it safe to use on linens, cotton, synthetics, and blends. Almost all of our vendors recommend LinenWash® products.

Le Blanc® does not recommend using the same soap for everything. Each of their formulas is different and is made specifically for laundering certain fibers. There are even special formulas that are fragrance-free and allergen-free and some that are made especially for men and children. We have used and tested LinenWash® for years and highly recommend it. The cost is about $1 per load.

Because Egyptian cotton has a luxury cachet, many customers ask if a sheet or duvet cover they are interested in is made from that type of cotton. The Egyptian government is making that information more accessible by recently launching an initiative that would lead to the licensing of 100 percent Egyptian-cotton home fashions to make sure that products labeled 100% Egyptian cotton really are. “Much of the Egyptian cotton used around the world is actually a blend, even though it says only ‘Egyptian cotton’ on the packaging,” according to Cotton Egypt Association executive director Sahar Mounir. “We’re looking to license the name ‘Egyptian cotton,’ and we have created a logo that can be used only on products that are 100 percent Egyptian cotton.” Mounir said Cotton Egypt has established a testing and monitoring program to ensure that a product labeled 100 percent Egyptian cotton really is.

We always educate our customers by pointing out that there are different qualities of Egyptian cotton and that the spinning, weaving, and finishing processes also determine the quality and feel of any cotton sheeting product.

Egyptian cotton is considered the best because it produces the longest, smoothest threads of any of the types of cotton. It is based on a longer fiber and is softer and more durable than other cottons. Blends or derivatives can be any combination of Egyptian cotton and some other cotton not grown in Egypt. According to Fairchild’s Dictionary of Textiles, “the U.S. has crossed Egyptian cotton with American cotton since 1903.”

75 percent of exported Egyptian cotton is inferior to American Pima cotton, according to Matt Laughlin, executive vice president of the Supima Association of America. Laughlin says, “it’s not as long, it’s not as fine, and it doesn’t hold up as well. They dilute the quality.” The Supima Associate licenses their products and has their own logo.

We actually test our competitions high thread count sheets and cases, so we really know what something will feel like after washing and ironing. We invite customers to feel a sheet or duvet cover before they buy it and tell them that we guarantee that it will feel the same after many washings. We do stock sheets with thread counts of up to 1020 and also offer 300-count sheets that feel better than many others with a higher thread count.

Always make sure that you can return a sheet or duvet cover if it does not feel as good or hold up as long as you expected. We are always happy to send you a swatch of any of our sheeting fabrics so you can feel the quality for yourself before buying.

Yesterday Mikhael Romain, a design editor from the magazine California Home + Design, came to the store to interview me on what’s new in table linens for Fall 2008. She wanted to see the newest, latest thing and I explained that fashions in table settings don’t change quite as quickly as clothing styles do. Fewer people set a fancy table these days or even use fabric table linens for every meal. When people do shop for table linens, it is most often for a holiday occasion or for an evening of entertaining.

Twenty or twenty-five years ago, customers would buy sets of coordinating print mats and napkins for the breakfast table and white linen damask or embroidered tablecloths for formal dinners. But lifestyles have changed. Now we sell a lot of hard mats (textured vinyl that resembles leather or straw cloth) in solid colors that can be dressed up or down depending on the choice of napkin.

Combine a hard mat with a striped cotton napkin and it works for casual meals. Dress it up with a linen napkin or a silk like synthetic and a beaded napkin ring, and it will serve for all but the most formal occasions.

That said, what’s new in table linens? Spice tones are always popular for fall and we have hard mats, napkins and cotton damask tablecloths in colors like pumpkin, paprika and topaz. Subtle metallic shades, such as pewter, bronze and antique gold are featured in table linens for the holidays.

Choosing table settings to complement your china or to coordinate with the dining room, rather than following the latest fashion color, is still our recommendation. Stop in the store anytime to see what’s new, and don’t forget to measure your table before you come. Maybe with the growth of the “Slow Food” movement, we will start gathering around the dining table again, instead of eating on the run.

Shelley Rideout
Buyer

The annual New York International Gift Show, held August 16-19, is so much bigger and grander than the comparable show recently held in San Francisco. Not only were the vendor booths in the At Home section held at Pier 94 and the Javits Convention Center much larger in size and more spectacular in presentation, but our main bedding vendors showed here (but not in San Francisco): Sferra, Matouk, Anali, Hamburg House, just to name a few. Many of our vendors, such as Yves Delorme and Home Source, showed in their permanent showrooms at 230 Fifth Ave.

Mai Tai

It was wonderful to be able to sit down with the owners of all of these companies, e.g., Nancy Koltes at Nancy Koltes and Paul Hooker at Sferra, and catch up on both our personal and business lives. Everyone agreed that the last year had been especially challenging and we brainstormed about what would be happening in the coming year, whether it is new display ideas or new merchandising programs.

Visiting other retail stores to see how they were displaying bedding is always interesting. Beds were made with coverlets with folded duvets with duvet covers at the end of the bed. We have always shown our duvet covers completely spread out so the customer can really see what they will look like. I wondered if that was a New York style since duvet covers aren’t really needed there in the warmer summer months.

Palatiane

I specifically went looking for organic sheets and came home with two samples, one from Sferra and another from a new company called Goldie Home, which is based here in San Francisco. We will now do some testing by actually using these samples and seeing how they feel and look after a few washings.

My favorite new bedding prints were Mai Tai from the 1891 Collection by Sferra and Palatiane by Yves Delorme. My favorite high end bedding line was Alanya, a jacquard duvet cover by Sferra, which we will stock shortly. In the home accessory category, I was quite impressed by a number of silk flower lines from Diane James Designs, Immortalis Botanicals, and New Growth Designs. They make such great accents anywhere in the home and look very real.

Alanya

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.

We get this question all of the time. The main reason is that mattresses are no longer a standard size and most are much thicker now than in the past since the “high profile” mattresses are considered more luxurious. A very common complaint years ago was the fitted sheets were too tight or didn’t have long enough sides to completely cover their mattress. And certainly now long enough to have bit of tuck under to prevent the fitted sheet from riding up the mattress and coming “undone.”

Now because of the wider mattresses, manufacturers are typically making them 15-17” deep, which is fine for some pillow top beds, but way too much for the older mattresses, which used to be a standard 8-9” thick. It’s even too much for some 12” thick mattresses. T here is also a trend to make them oversized and this just adds to the problem.

We have a simple fix. We have our workroom just cut them down, usually after a few washings so we know what the true size is after shrinkage. It’s kind of like getting your pants length altered because it is too long. We are so used to just putting a new sheet on the bed that it seems like a real nuisance to wash it and then return it for altering. But it will fit perfectly. We also make fitted sheets from fabric for odd sized or shaped beds, e.g., a round bed.

A full bed, also called a double bed, measures 54×75. A queen measures 60×80 and so many manufacturers make a full/queen flat sheet that is really a queen flat sheet and a full/queen comforter that is really a queen comforter. It is simply less expensive to produce and stock one sized flat sheet (typically 90” wide) and one sized comforter (also typically 90” wide) for both sizes. They obviously can’t choose the full size because it would be too narrow and since today’s mattresses are so much thicker, the queen will often work for the full without too much complaint.

When I first started in the business in the 70’s, full was a much more common size, but not so much anymore. People now want a wider mattress so they have the luxury of more width and now spend more time in their bedrooms since so many have either a television or even a whole entertainment center in their bedrooms. I’ve never seen a statistic on which rooms people watch the 10 o’clock news or Leno or Letterman, but I have a hunch a fair number are watching from their beds.

But the good news is fitted sheets and mattress pads still have to measure a true 54×75 or they simply won’t fit.

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.

When my father died in 1982, I was suddenly in charge of the store. I was really scared. Even though I had worked at the store for 11 years at that point, I really didn’t know exactly what to do. I could sell, do basic bookkeeping, and do shipping and receiving. I always seemed to have lots of ideas to suggest to my father, but when I assumed control, I was not so sure I could successfully implement those ideas. There was no training program, no manual or written guidelines for buying, and there were things my father (pictured on the right, with his parents, Rosel and Fred, and his wife, Leonore, at the store’s opening in 1953) did that I had never done, like going to Madeira, Portugal on a buying trip.

I decided to call George Matouk, Sr., another second generation owner of a respected wholesale company in our industry. He gave me advice that I have never forgotten. He told me not to worry, that I would make lots of mistakes the first year, would correct them in my second year, and start seeing success in my third year. I listened to him and believed him. He ultimately was right and his words of wisdom got me through some challenging times when I had lots of doubts about what I was doing.

I am the third generation of my family to run Scheuer Linens and George Matouk, Jr. (pictured on the left, with his father, George Sr.), is the third generation of his family to run Matouk. In 1929, John Matouk founded a company whose “mission was to give American homemakers ready access to the world’s finest, most luxurious linens.” My grandparents started in 1937 by selling fine linens in customers’ homes. There was no Scheuer Linens store in those days. As both companies evolved and grew, both stayed committed to having the very finest quality linens and never compromised on quality or service.

As the years went on, both Matouk and Scheuer Linens diversified their product lines of bed, bath, and table linens. We still offer the full line of Matouk linens. George, Jr. and I often talk on the telephone about our future plans and every so often, we reminisce about our fathers and grandfathers. It always gives me a warm feeling to know that we are successfully carrying on the traditions established by our grandfathers.