Forget Egyptian cotton. The most luxurious sheets are made in America

When most people think of luxurious bedding, they imagine silky, breathable sheets, made from fine, high staple cotton. Boll & Branch wants to add another criteria to that list: Luxury sheets shouldn’t harm the planet, either.



Last week, Boll & Branch launched Summit Supima , its most luxurious sheets to date. They are made from American-grown organic supima cotton, an extra-long staple cotton that makes up less that 0.01% of the world’s cotton supply. With a starting price of $729 for a set, they compete with luxury brands like Frette and Sferra. In keeping with Boll & Branch’s commitment to ethical sourcing, the company uses a transparent supply chain , partnering directly with farmers and weavers who are well compensated for their work.



Boll & Branch launched a decade ago, amidst a wave of direct-to-consumer bedding startups, like Parachute and Brooklinen. However, it set itself apart from its competitors by focusing on its supply chain. Founders Missy and Scott Tannen had been disturbed by the lack of transparency in the bedding industry. In their own search for bedsheets, they couldn’t get a straight answer about where the cotton was grown or woven. So they set out to launch their own company. They spent months in India, locating organic cotton farmers and weavers; they wanted all their partners to be certified Fair Trade, ensuring workers earned a living wage. This has proven to be a clever business strategy. A decade in, the brand now generates more than $200 million annually.



The brand is considered premium, with most sheet sets costing a little over $200. But the company has been curious about whether they could create even higher quality sheets. “We wanted to explore the limits of what we could achieve,” says Missy Tannen, chief designer. “What if we could get access to the highest quality cotton in the world?”



[Photo: Boll & Branch]



What makes a high-quality sheet?



The quality of cotton comes down to the staple, which is the length of the fiber on the fluffy boll of the cotton plant. A longer staple allows for a finer weave, creating fabric that is softer and stronger. This kind of cotton can only be grown in hot dry climates. And for the first time, the company sourced the cotton from American farmers able to grow organic, extra-long staple supima cotton.



They found a farm in Texas that fit the bill. “To create this quality cotton, the farmers need to control every aspect of the growing process, from the amount of water to the kinds of natural pesticides they’re using,” says Tannen. The process is much more labor-intensive, requiring farmers to be more precise about every single part of the growing process. As a result, the price of the final product is multiples higher than the cost of traditional organic cotton.



Boll & Branch began buying small batches of the cotton and shipping it to the weavers in India that the company works with. Together, they experimented with many weaves to create different fabrics, until they settled on the final version, which has a silky but also substantial feel. It’s extremely soft against the skin, but also holds its shape and is less prone to wrinkling. “We called it ‘Summit’ because it is the pinnacle of what we were trying to achieve with our sheets,” Tannen says.



[Photo: Boll & Branch]



Why luxury sheets cost more



Since so little of this organic, extra-long staple supima is grown every year, Boll & Branch could only buy a small quantity of it. For now, the Summit sheets are a limited edition product. They’re about four times the cost of the brand’s regular sheets, but Tannen believes that there are some Boll & Branch customers who will be interested in these sheets. “We know that some of our customers were used to spending much more on sheets, but opt for ours because they want organic sheets that are ethically made,” she says.



When Tannen discovered that this year’s Met Gala theme was Sleeping Beauty, she thought it would be a great opportunity to collaborate with a designer to create a garment out of the brand’s fabrics. They reached out to Prabal Gurung, a Nepalese designer, who was commissioned to create a garment for Maria Sharapova. He looked through the brand’s entire catalog of products and picked the Summit Supima. “He just fell in love with the drape and the hand feel,” Tannen recalls. “He thought it would make for the perfect dress material.”



As they were creating different dress prototypes, they dyed the fabric many different colors. At the last minute, they decided that yellow was right. So Tannen scrambled to find a company in the New York garment district that could dye the material the exact Pantone shade Gurung had in mind. It was well worth the effort. The final gown was a vibrant yellow with a shawl featuring enormous flowers. “Using bedsheet material fit the theme of the gala perfectly,” she says. “But ultimately, sheets are just enormous pieces of fabric. Either way, you want them free of toxic chemicals.”