Do duvets make you hot stuff in bed?
STANDARDS are slipping. The old certainties are crumbling — even in the Royal Household. The reason? Windsor Castle staff have replaced sheets and blankets with — perish the thought — duvets.
It’s the end of tightly tucked hospital corners, a decision met with much sniffing. A Castle source said: Many in the Royal Household believe using sheets, blankets and eiderdowns is one of those traditions that should be retained.’
So how did we come to fall for the soft charms of the foreign duvet? And which is the best type of bedding, anyway?
WHY CALL IT A DUVET?
IT GeTS its name from the Old French ‘dum’ meaning down, the soft feathers of young birds used in bedding. This became
‘dumet’ for an item of feather bedding and, in time, ‘duvet’.
NO DUVETS PLEASE, WE’RE BRITISH
SOMe credit diplomat and merchant Paul Rycaut with discovering the down bedding favoured in chilly Hamburg.
When he visited the city in 1689, he sent bags of eiderdown to friends in england.
But it didn’t catch on, because we kept our sheets and blankets until relatively recently.
It appears, however, that where the retailers went wrong was in marketing duvets on their warmth. They should have sold them on sex appeal . . .
THE JOYS OF DUVETS — AND SEX
WHeN Habitat opened in 1964, founder Terence Conran stocked the duvet — rebranded as part of a sexy Sixties lifestyle.
He recalled: ‘I had been in Sweden in the 1950s and was given a duvet to sleep under. I probably had a girl with me and I thought this was all part of the mood of the time — liberated sex and easy living.’
A Habitat advert from 1973 (a year after The Joy Of Sex was published to storming success) showed a young mixed-race couple, naked under their ‘Slumberdown’ duvet, dozing after . . . well . . . you can guess.
WOOLLIES THAT LAST FOR DECADES
DuveTS began to outsell blankets in 1987; last year, the market researcher GFK found that 7.6 million were sold in the uK.
John lewis sells 514 duvets through its website for every ten traditional satin-edged blankets. Debenhams sells seven duvets for every blanket, while neither Argos nor Ikea sell wool bed blankets.
But the sales figures may not tell the full story. Wool is a natural fibre and, unlike duvets — which the uK Sleep Council recommends you replace every five years — wool blankets last for decades.
Hainsworth has been making woollen blankets at its mill in Stanningley, West Yorkshire, since 1828. Its Merino lambswool ‘Duchess’ blankets with a satin edge cost £155 for a single and £255 for a king.
So attached are some customers to their blankets, says Diane Simpson, sales director of Hainsworth, that 30 or 40 years after buying them, they ask for the satin binding, now fraying, to be repaired.
THE £12,000 SUPER DUVET
HAINSWORTH sells a kingsize cashmere bed blanket at £2,075. French company Frette, meanwhile, is said to make the finest sheets in the world.
A king-size cotton flat sheet costs from around £500. The best duvets are pure eiderdown in a mulberry silk cover. A super-king 13.5 tog eiderdown duvet made by Schlossberg of Switzerland costs £12,000.
WHY BLANKETS ARE BEST FOR ALLERGIES
FOR those with asthma, eczema and allergies, wool blankets may be more beneficial than feather — and even synthetic — duvet fillings.
Wool is naturally anti-allergenic, anti-microbial (inhibits the growth of micro-organisms like bacteria) and does not collect the static charge that attracts dust, dirt and house mites.
‘Natural bedding like silk or wool prevents the passage of, and creates a less hospitable environment for, house dust mites,’ says Amena Warner of Allergy uK.
IF THEY’RE GOOD ENOUGH FOR WINDSOR...
ONCe, any guest at a country house party would have expected hospital corners. In Downton Abbey, the beds were all made with sheets, blankets and eiderdowns.
But etiquette consultant Jo Bryant says duvets are now increasingly used. ‘A lot of the grand houses no longer have the staff,’ she says. Bryant puts the change at Windsor down to good manners, however. ‘If guests are used to duvets, you should make the beds with duvets.’
There’s no excuse, though, for neglectful housekeeping. The grandest house I’ve ever stayed in, a French chateau, used duvets. When I fluffed up the ancient covering on the first night, a great cloud of dust and loose feathers puffed up.
There’s something to be said for laundered sheets and crisp corners after all . . .