Oregon Dry Cleaners Assoication
Consumers willing to pay hundreds of dollars for upscale bed linens and accessories often are confronted with another bill: the dry cleaner's.
· Dry-cleaning is often just part of the process
By
Maria Gallagher
FOR THE INQUIRER
The best-dressed beds this fall will be wearing fabrics as fashionable as those hanging in the clothes closet. Rich velvets and shimmering silks are getting prominent play in home furnishings catalogs, as are opulent tapestry prints, tailored rayon-cotton blends, intricate crewelwork embroidery, and high-thread-count Egyptian cottons. Leather pillows and faux fur throws are among the more daring accessories.
The visual and tactile pleasures promised by these high-end duvet covers and comforters make the armchair shopper weak with desire. Then the fine print is glimpsed, and reality bites: Hey, they're taking us to the cleaners!
Literally. Most of those fancy fabrics come with a "dry-clean only" care advisory.
"Most of the consumers who buy this kind of bedding are aware that it requires a certain degree of care," said Farley Nachemin, vice president of merchandising for Gump's By Mail. "At the point of purchase, they're ready to make that commitment."
The commitment can be costly. Tom Vecchione finds it hard to believe that anyone with a dog, a child, a grandchild, or a penchant for morning coffee in bed would buy a bed covering that requires special care, but he sees the inevitable result week in and week out.
Vecchione, whose family owns Gem Cleaners in
At Carriage Trade Cleaners in Feasterville, a comforter cleaning can cost as much as $75 for the same reasons, said co-owner Brett Sackarowitz.
The yen for luxury bedding reflects the nationwide trend toward more upscale products in general, Nachemin said. Houses are getting bigger; cars are being delivered with more options; sumptuous beds are ground zero of the home cocoon.
Gump's By Mail, which specializes in Asian-influenced furniture and decorative
items, began adding more bedding to its line about a year ago. Its Fall 2000 catalog features a silk charmeuse
ensemble with a duvet cover in a tone-on-tone calligraphy print. Matching
pieces, all in a cool celadon hue, include a silk bedskirt,
540-thread-count silk sheets, silk shams, and tassled
accessory pillows, all imported from
"We cater to more of a luxury customer. These are people who typically would prefer to send their linens out versus caring for them anyway," Nachemin said. The company's telemarketing representatives are trained to answer customers' questions about care when orders are called in.
Scan competing catalogs and you'll find a range of elaborate, and elaborately priced, bedding possibilities that require professional servicing.
Horchow Fine Linen, in its "special savings edition" catalog, offers the Chinese Tea Garden, an Austin Horn pattern on a duvet cover fashioned from a blend of cotton, acetate, silk and rayon. The soft rose and seafoam hues on an ivory background are exquisitely tasteful; the full/queen size can be yours for $1,099.90. Add a matching rose dust skirt for $459.90, and a pair of standard-size shams for $519.80.
Soft Surroundings, which focuses on bedding and women's loungewear, features
a quilted velvet comforter and four bedding sets
for which dry-cleaning is advised. The most regal entry is the Raj
Bedding, a Turkish-inspired pattern in sage and auburn on 600-thread-count
Egyptian cotton imported from
The Early Fall 2000 catalog from Linensource, marketed to a value-conscious customer, features mostly machine-washable bedding, but includes nine comforters and several blankets and throws that require dry-cleaning. Its Palace Tapestry coverlet ($299 queen) is made from all-cotton Belgian tapestry linen.
Pottery Barn's fall-winter lineup includes solid-color, cotton-velvet duvet covers ($199 full/queen), a tufted-cotton, solid-color velvet quilt ($249 full/queen), and a cotton-velvet patchwork quilt ($299 full/queen) with matching standard shams ($49 each). A faux fur throw that looks like a swatch of Blackglama mink - at least until the dog sheds on it - is $149. (Dallas-based Horchow Home offers a tufted faux mink throw for $310, and a faux fur pillow for $95.)
Restoration Hardware stores are dressing their beds with private-label, 100 percent cotton shams and duvets in floral and geometric patterns ($195 full/queen). Dry-cleaning is specified on the packaging.
While high-maintenance bedding seems to be everywhere, some retailers won't sell it, regarding it as too great an inconvenience.
"We don't carry anything that is to be dry-cleaned. There is more
than enough high-end [bedding] in 100 percent cotton," said Louise
Howard, a co-owner of Maleka Fine Linens in
Although price is not usually a factor for Maleka customers, Howard knows that if a comforter must be schlepped to the dry cleaner, it probably won't be cleaned as often as it should be. That's not a good thing, she said, because people perspire more than they realize when they sleep. And if leftover makeup rubs off, the stains can prove impossible to remove if not treated promptly.
Washable, no-iron sheets
Domestications, a catalog that targets middle-income customers, prefers to offer luxury-look, easy-care products, said its president, Michael Ippolito.
One recent introduction is cashmina, a knitted polyester-cotton fabric that has the soft feel of pashmina, but can be washed and won't pill. It's being offered in sheets, and a duvet is likely to follow.
Other specialty items: a washable, polyester-crushed-velvet comforter, 100 percent Egyptian-cotton sheets that don't require ironing, washable silk sheets, and hand-crocheted cotton coverlets that are washable on the gentle cycle.
Ippolito believes that special-maintenance linens "are not something that's ever going to be a big market. What are the return rates? Who wants to iron a sheet? You've got a duvet cover made out of linen, you've got to dry-clean it. No matter how much buzz you hear about it, [there are] not a lot of people buying it."
Faux animal looks
However, Domestications has introduced leather pillows and a lambskin-leather throw to coordinate with its animal-print bedding. Both require professional cleaning. The catalog also has three different faux fur throws ($69.99 each) that must be dry-cleaned.
Gump's By Mail is considering adding leather and faux suede as top-of-the-bed accents, Nachemin said, although faux fur is not likely to join the Gump's lineup.
"It's more of a fashion issue, a trend. Not a luxury fiber," he explained.
Asked whether he owned any special-care bedding, Nachemin said he and his wife love the linen sheets they bought a few years ago.
"We wash them ourselves," he said, "and then we argue about which of us is going to iron them."
