The battle for bed linen supremacy - long fought over high, higher and highest thread counts - may be taking a detour from the cotton field to the forest.
Instead of pitting pima cotton against Egyptian cotton or lustrous sateen against no-iron percale, this latest skirmish for market share involves sheets and pillowcases made using fibers of bamboo plants and beech trees.
To be sure, these relatively exotic fibers are still a small part of the market, and many people have never even heard of them. But both fabrics are being explicitly pitched to eco-conscious consumers eager to believe that even small, personal gestures like what our sheets are made of can help the beleaguered planet.
After years of limited exposure - principally through catalogs and retailers promoting organic and "natural" products - these linens can now be found on shelves in Target, Sam's Club and big-box bedding chains as well as in specialty boutiques and catalogs.
"I think everyone in their heart wants to do a little something to make the world a little bit better," says Janet Partridge, spokeswoman for Garnet Hill, the bedding and fashion catalog operation that recently began selling a line of bamboo-cotton-blend linens in vivid colors.
Joseph Carena, publisher of the trade newsletter Home Textiles Today, agrees. "There has been a tremendous acceptance for . . . cellulose-based fabrics like bamboo in apparel that has filtered its way into home textiles," he says. "The ecological concerns of our society, the greening of the home, have created a tremendous demand."
So just how eco-righteous are these fabrics?
Bamboo, which is native to Asia, is a highly renewable grass; it can grow a foot or more in a day and reach heights of 80 or 90 feet. For centuries, it has been used to make everything from bridges, buildings and furniture to musical instruments, baskets and tableware.
Beech trees, native to Europe, North America and parts of Asia, are slow growers, eventually reaching 50 or 60 feet. In the 1890s, the trees were a source of pulp for civilization's first synthetic fabric, developed in France as "artificial silk" and later named rayon. Today, however, some beech trees are being sustainably farmed specifically for their fiber, and its variations are sold under such trademarks as Modal and Tencel.
Naysayers contend that both bamboo- and beech-based textiles are not so ecologically friendly because large quantities of water and chemicals are used to transform the pulp into fiber.
But David Adkins, a sales marketing manager for Lenzing AG, the Austria-based manufacturer of Modal and Tencel, says, "We use recycled water from an Austrian lake. You do use some chemicals. . . . What's the definition of 'environmental'? It's biodegradable, the fiber can be landfilled and disappeared."
Carena, who began his textile career selling polyester and other petroleum-based synthetics decades ago, calls the manufacturing process the price of progress. "If you want to be totally ecologically correct, we will go back to the Stone Age," he said.
Whatever the degree of environmental correctness, there is no denying the tactile allure of both beech and bamboo.
"It feels wonderful on your skin, the drape is fabulous," says Partridge, describing Garnet Hill's bamboo-cotton blend that is woven with 200 threads per square inch.
Just 200? That is relatively unimpressive in today's marketplace of sheets claiming 600, 1,000, even 1,500 threads. But it is also not terribly relevant because beech and bamboo fibers are so soft and fine, which gives them a silky, but not slippery, feel.
At a time when a four-piece set of the finest Italian and French bed linens - think Frette, Anichini, Porthault - can easily hit four figures, beech and bamboo seem downright reasonable.
At Bed, Bath & Beyond, $50 will buy a 100 percent beech jersey queen-size set (two sheets, two cases), and $80 will cover an ensemble in pure beech sateen. Garnet Hill's queen bamboo-cotton-blend quartet runs $130, while Elite Linens of Jamestown, N.C., offers a 100 percent bamboo twill set for $200 on its Web site, Elitelinens.com.
But modest pricing is not the chief selling point among devotees.
"If people would try bamboo, they would knock the pants off 100 percent cotton. They feel just like silk," rhapsodizes Allen Fogelman, whose wife owns Elite and who could easily buy the best linens made.
"It's a fabulous product. They are antimicrobial, bacteria can't grow in them. We can have anything we want on our bed at home, and for the past eight months this is all we have used," says Fogelman. And he mentions another plus: At 6 feet tall and 220 pounds, he says he gets a better night's sleep on bamboo sheets because they stay cool.
Phyllis Moore, vice president for product development at the Atlanta-based bedding wholesaler HomeSource International, is equally enthusiastic.
Two years ago, she was surfing the Internet looking for the next new thing in bedding when she read that Chinese manufacturers were turning bamboo fiber into yarn. Today, HomeSource sells 100 percent bamboo twill bedding sets to luxury linens shops nationwide.
"They keep you cool when it is hot and warm when it is cold," says Moore. "I call them my menopausal sheets."Washington Post via Duluth News Tribune
