Linens for Your Home

Meghan: Linens are an essential part of our everyday home. We use when eating, sleeping and grooming. And to learn the best one in line up in any home, I am here to speak with Alan Jazzmen, the creative director at Anichini. I am hitting the road, searching for answers and finding great design. It is a quest for beauty, function, and of course, inspiration. Let us start from the basics, what are linens? Alan: Linens are kind of generic term that we use to describe home furnishings that are made out of fabric. And we probably call them linens because at one point, the most common fabric four of all of these things was a hundred% linen. Now, most of what we use is clothing but we still use the term linens. So, you would have bed linens, table linens and bath linens would be your three major categories. Meghan: And what are the essential linens that people will need in their home? Alan: For bed linens, you would probably always want to have two sets of sheaths that you rotate so that you get longer wear from them. Meghan: You get longer wear from rotating your sheaths? Alan: Yes. It is kind of the same principle as winter and summer tires. You will get a lot more mileage out of them if you change them. So that you are washing one set and then putting it in your linen closet and you have the other set on the bed and you rotate back and forth between those two. Meghan: Why is that? Alan: It gives the fibers a chance to rest and they retain more strength that way and last longer. And you can also have seasonal sheaths which might be, they could be very similar weight but maybe the colors are very different because you like cooler colors in the summer time and warmer colors in the winter time. Meghan: That is a good point. Alan: Or it could be actual the weights of them. You may have a duvet cover for the winter that is made out of heavier, warmer fabric than the lighter weight one that you use for summer. The biggest category in sheathing is of course cotton sheaths. There are linen sheaths which are wonderful for warm climates because linen breaths the basts of any fiber, it breaths better than and wakes away moisture better than cotton. Meghan: Which will keep you cool. Alan: Which will keep you cool. They are a little more high maintenance and they are a little bit more expensive. And then at the opposite end from linen would be silk sheaths which are wonderful in winter because they insulate better than linen. Meghan: I was not expecting that. Alan: Yes, and so those are two things that some people would say to have a truly complete sheathing wardrobe, you need linen for hot weather in the summer time, you need silk for winter and then you need cotton for your everyday kind of wardrobe, but you can certainly within cotton, there are enough choices that you can suit anybody’s taste within the range of cottons. Meghan: Alright, so we have our bedroom all setup. We got our two pairs of sheaths, we have got our seasonal, I guess comforters versus the other stuff, what do you need in the bathroom? Alan: In the bathroom, you probably want at least two or three sets of towels in which would include your wash cloth, a hand towel, a bath towel, a bath sheath. Meghan: What is a bath sheath? Alan: A bath sheath is an extra large bath towel that you can really wrap around you after getting out of the shower. It is just really big and generous and wonderful. Meghan: That comes in handy when it is cold. Alan: Yes, and those generally what we use in America for toweling all terry toweling and a lot of the best terry toweling is Turkish terry, made in Turkey and they are famous for it. But another alternative which is really great especially in summer time or in warm climates or humid climates, Italians and Europeans make wonderful linen towels which when we see them, we tend to think of it as kitchen towel or dish towel but the reason that a lot of dish towels and kitchen towels that is used for washing dishes and wiping our hands are so popular is they actually absorb more water and dry faster than terry. Meghan: I would no