La Chambre — Bed Linen Made to Measure

No part of the house is used as long at a stretch as the bed. A third of life lies between its fabrics — and yet the bedroom is often the room for which the least is made to measure.

La Chambre is our answer: the bedroom line of the atelier, named after the French word for the room in which one sleeps — just as our Le Couvert denotes the fabric folder in which we keep samples and patterns. La Chambre treats the bed as what it is: the most important textile room of the house.

To it belongs linen that does not come off the shelf: sewn to your bed, from fabrics chosen with the hands, and made to last for decades.

Linen is our first choice for the bed: full-bodied, breathable, cool in summer and warm enough in winter. It creases quietly and grows softer with every wash. The term linen is explained in our glossary.

Percale is a densely woven, fine cotton — cool, smooth and matt, for those who like to climb into a fresh, firm bed.

Satin falls more softly and carries a quiet sheen. It lies smooth on the skin and gives the bed a still, ordered finish.

We speak little about thread counts. They say less than their reputation promises — what matters is the feel: how the fabric touches, how it breathes, how it ages. That is why we choose at the sample, between the fingers, and not at the number in the catalogue.

Standard bed linen knows two dozen sizes. Beds know infinitely many. We sew for all those that fall in between:

Over-long and over-wide duvets for tall people and wide beds — so that the duvet reaches, even when two lie beneath it. High mattresses and toppers for which no standard fitted sheet has ever truly fitted. Berths on ships, in attic rooms and children’s rooms, with walls instead of open sides — a topic of its own, to which we have dedicated an article in the journal: bed linen for berths.

Every cover is cut individually and filed in the atelier’s pattern archive. If you reorder years later, we sew exactly the same measure again.

Bed linen carries marks. The hand-embroidered monogram — centred below the head, at the edge of the pillow or discreetly at the hem — turns a set of linen into a piece of family history. We embroider letters and crests by hand, tone on tone or in a colour that speaks to the room.

The reverse path is familiar to us as well: heirloom linen from the grandparents’ trousseau whose monogram no longer matches today’s names. Such pieces we re-dedicate — we release old marks, weave in new ones, cut the fabric to today’s measures. What lay in the cupboard for decades sleeps again.

True quality shows in the tenth year, not the first. Linen, percale and satin can be machine-washed; with every fabric we include the exact instructions — temperature, spin, drying.

Mangled, that is smoothed with the hot roller, the linen lies still and smooth in the bed. But good linen may also live unmangled: lightly creased, breathing, honest. Both are right; it is a question of temperament.

More about life with good bed linen — and about what sets it apart from the department-store world — you can read in our journal article about bed linen that lasts for generations.

Write to us how your bed is made — mattress, duvet, special measures or a berth for which you can find nothing. We reply personally within one working day and arrange a first meeting — at the atelier in Hamburg or in your home.

Above the finished, dressed bed, a made-to-measure bed canopy often completes the room — in the same fabric as the linen, if you wish.

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