The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - The Telegraph Magazine
Time for bed
With the clocks going back next weekend, make your extra hour in bed a little cosier
LATE OCTOBER IS a time for hibernation. If you’re lucky, when the clocks go back next weekend, you’ll be spending your extra hour in bed – indeed, The Sleep Council has named Sunday 28 October National Sleep In Day – so it’s as good a time as any to make sure your bed linen is up to the mark.
Lancashire-based company Peter Reed produces beautiful high-threadcount cotton bedding, and has recently launched a new collection called Albion, currently available exclusively at Harrods. The range uses Supima cotton, which is woven and finished in Manchester by English Fine Cottons. The country’s only cotton spinner reopened two years ago in a bid to bring cotton manufacturing back to the UK. The bedding comes with a choice of coloured cording and customisation options, so prices are at the high end – £165 for a pillowcase – but it is the only bedding made from cotton woven in England.
Also at Harrods, Frette recently launched Style of Living, a collection of bedding and throws, from £85, that are specifically designed to be mixed and matched, so you can update the look of your bedroom without having to buy a whole new set of linens.
Of the new and rather more accessible brands on the block, Urban Collective, launched by US brand Lexington, uses recycled wool and organic bamboo and cotton to make incredibly soft bed linen (from £21.99 for a pillowcase) and throws in a muted – and yes, somewhat urban – palette of dusky lilacs, olive greens and greys. It also commissions emerging designers: the first collaboration, with New York-based Raul Magdaleno, features a motif based on tattoos and graffiti he spotted in Brooklyn neighbourhood Williamsburg.
Another newcomer, Undercover, which also prides itself on its eco credentials, is producing linens made from cotton and Tencel, a soft, breathable and sustainably produced yarn made from plants such as eucalyptus. There are no plain white sheets here: bedding comes in charcoal, pale peach, Hockney blue or a black-and-white, Terrazzo-style spotted design, with the option of reversible linens that allow you to change up the look with a simple flip of a pillow.