Bedding haute couture: Are you a sheet snob? It depends on your thread count
America loves to say "thread count." It's the password to the Pottery Barn, the buzzword de rigueur.
It is the new status symbol — the current Starbucks latte and SUV. It is at Target, Wal-Mart and all over QVC. Martha Stewart is involved. All this, about bedsheets.
Thread count: the exact number of threads in a square inch of sheet fabric. The higher the thread count, the softer the sheet. (In American status culture, this can also mean the higher the thread count, the better the person, the bigger the house, the larger the diamond.)
Thread count is a whole new language, and so many Americans speak it.
They know that Egyptian cotton threads are better than regular cotton (Martha says so) and that the truly devoted iron their sheets. They know the hierarchy of thread count, which goes something like this: a 180-count sheet might as well be burlap, and 300-count is ever so much better. It goes as high as a slinky 1,080-count, and really, you deserve it.
The language is taught at the same time in ritzy linen catalogs and in the aisles of Kmart. Thread count is even mentioned during sex scenes in newer romance novels.
The wonder of all this, really, is that Americans care.
"This is like the phenomenon of bottled water," says pop-culture expert and Syracuse University professor Robert Thompson, who doesn't own expensive sheets.
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Well, yes, and here's the kicker: This is a status symbol the world will not see. You cannot drive your sheets or wear your pillowcase.
And this status symbol isn't cheap: A 600-count set of sheets can cost about $500. Think of the lost compliments, the absent envious glances, the tortured inner snob, aching to disclose her or his count number. Where is the gratification?
Comfort is in demand
And woe the Sept. 11 tie-in, but there is one, and it's this: Right now in America, comfort is big. For the past six months, people have wanted to be lying in bed, laughing at "Everybody Loves Raymond" and eating pot pie. Why not do it in style?
Advertising Age reports that the sales of luxury goods after Sept. 11 did not decline: Americans simply found new rationale for buying them, saying their purchases were for well-being, not status.
And last fall, In Style magazine said that "massages, vacations and high-thread-count cotton sheets ... are necessities masquerading as luxuries," one of "57 Things Every Woman Should Know," in addition to the importance of keeping high heels in your bottom desk drawer and learning to program the VCR.
Here is how obsessed we are with thread count: There is now a device whose sole purpose is to count the threads. (How else did you think they would get the number?) It is called the pick glass — a 1-inch, hinged little thing that folds over the sheet and magnifies the material for counting.
Jim Kennedy, head buyer for Chambers, a high-end linen catalog owned by Williams-Sonoma, has counted threads before. Totally boring, says Kennedy, but necessary.
If Chambers omits the thread count of a sheets set in its catalog, Kennedy says, customers revolt.
Even at Target and Wal-Mart, thread counts are disclosed on each package of sheets. When QVC puts high-count sheets on TV, the phones ring wildly. And at Kmart, there is Martha Stewart, who, of course, puts thread count on everything. Also, hotels now tout the thread count of their sheets.
More thread-count sightings: It's now an interview question during Los Angeles Times Magazine celebrity profiles, and one of the "Sex and the City" bedroom goddesses was chastised on her show for upstaging, and ruining, a set of $1,000, zillion-count Pratesi sheets.
Now, it's important to note here, says pop-culture expert Thompson, that the language of thread count is spoken best by those with hefty disposable incomes; not quite all of America is in on this.
Look for combed Egyptian cotton
The funniest part of all of this is that thread count really is not the most important thing when it comes to the softness of a sheet.
It is possible, Chambers buyer Kennedy says, for a 220-count sheet to be softer than a 400-count sheet. Tips for status sleepers: Look for combed Egyptian cotton first, sheets woven in Italy next and then ask about thread count.
Try telling that to shoppers Kennedy dealt with at a New York linens store. "It wasn't about price or about color. It wasn't about brand or a finish or an application or a hem."
Try as he would to explain to shoppers about the real hierarchy of sheets, "it was always about the thread count. 'Thread count, thread count, thread count.' "