The Linen Doctor

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.

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.

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.

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.

“I just opened the box this weekend.  Never have I had such a beautiful bed.  It is magnificent!  I cannot thank you enough for your creativity and instinct - bravo!  The material is gorgeous…it looks so rich on the bed.” - E.W.

New color threads are predicted every year in our industry by several established and reputable color forecasting companies.  Forecasts are made every year; sometimes they are very much the same, and sometimes they differ greatly.

At the beginning of 2008, blue got a lot of publicity.  The New York Times ran an article in December, “A New Year, A New Color: But Are We Blue.”  Pantone, the world-renouned authority on color, chose blue iris as their favorite color of 2008.  The San Francisco Chronicle ran a story in January, “Back in Blue,” and said that “now it’s time to introduce blue and yellow as the colors of 2008…”  Quite often, a collection of colors are chosen.  House Beautiful selected eleven designers to choose “13 Colors that Men Love,” including aruba blue and midnight navy.

Tough economic times typically call for neutral palettes, but bright colors and trends are being shown at home and textile trade shows and exhibitions around the world.  White and ivory have always been the best sellers in our store, Scheuer Linens, in San Francisco and for years blue was usually third.  But in recent years, chocolate, green, and variations on wheat an chamois have sold better that blue.

Will blue become popular again?  Only time and a sales history will tell.  We often look to see what the women’s fashion industry is doing with regard to color and style, since home fashions have often followed those trends.

Looking ahead, Pantone also identified seven 2009 color palettes, “that reflect individuality and make people feel good about who they are,” according to Tod Shulman, vice president of the fashions, home, and interiors division at Pantone.

The Pantone View Colour Planner for summer 2009 details seven palettes, including:  Female-ism (medium pastels with a tinge of retro glamour); Classic-ism (almost devoid of color except for one medium blue accent); Independent-ism (tart, bold, and gregarious colors); Today-ism (deep, dark shades of reddish blues, and brown); Absurd-ism (combines disproportionate color hues and values); Fetish-ism (”a carnal inspiration and desire for experimentation”); and Surreal-ism (”plays with scale, combination, and expectation to create unexpected, and even strange, creations”).  www.pantone.com.

At first, people often feel that new colors look different or strange.  Acceptance typically follows after people see a particular color palette promoted.  Finally, the customer says “I want that color.”

Related Links:

NY Times: But Are We Blue

SF Chronicle: Back in Blue

Emissions from some substances used to build furniture can provoke immediate, acute reactions in some people with chemical sensitivities, but even emissions that go unnoticed can present chronic risks from long-term exposure, according to an article by Susan Fornoff in the San Francisco Chronicle.

Here’s a partial list of chemicals in furniture that can make you sick:

Upholstery – Might use formaldehyde and perfluorooctanoic acid, considered a like human carcinogen by the EPA.

Couch legs or arms – Could be finished in a lacquer that releases volatile organic compounds, or VOCs, that the American Lung Association reports can irritate eyes, skin, and lungs and cause headaches, nausea, and even liver or kidney damage.

Corners of the couch – Could be glued with a product containing ethylene oxide, a probable carcinogen that can also cause brain and nerve malfunctions.

Upholstery dye – Might contain chemicals including benzidine, a known carcinogen, or hydrazine, a probably carcinogen with a range of adverse health effect.

Couch cushions – Might be filled with polyurethane foam made before 2006 that contains flame-retardant polybrominated diphenyl ethers, which are now banned in California for their potential health effects. Scheuer Linens uses latex in their Royal-Pedic mattress sets but polyurethane is still used in most mattresses being sold today.

Couch frame – Could be made pressed wood emitting formaldehyde fumes. These can cause cancer “and other adverse health effects,” according to the California Air Resources Board.

Check Greenguard and Green Seal, two independent and impartial nonprofit testers, for lists of the kind of furniture you’re looking for. You can also learn more at: Sustainable Furniture Council, and Royal-Pedic.