Duvets v eiderdowns the royal household takes it to the mattresses | Homes
ShortcutsHomes This article is more than 8 years oldDuvets v eiderdowns – the royal household takes it to the mattresses
This article is more than 8 years oldWindsor Castle is rumoured to have swapped its traditional bedding for a more modern alternative. Will they still be able to make a bed fit for a queen?
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The eiderdown is dead, long live the duvet! Windsor Castle is changing the way it makes its beds. Apparently, this revolution in bedding has upset traditionalists within the royal household, who believe there is only one true way to make a bed: with an eiderdown. Buckingham Palace declines to confirm these reports. Bedding must be a sensitive issue. After all, this is not just a fight over the duvet, but a battle over the meaning of the duvet.
The modern duvet is thought to have been introduced to the UK by Terence Conran, who first sold them in Habitat in 1964. Back then they were known as “continental quilts”, a foreign trespasser in the bedding market.
In fact, the language of duvets – “comforters” in the US, “doonas” in Australia – is slippery. Samuel Johnson referred to “duvets” in the Idler as early as 1759. But he may have been describing something that came to be known more commonly as an eiderdown: a mostly flat cover that encloses down in stitched compartments. Strictly speaking, it is only an eiderdown if the down it contains is from the eider duck, although the word has come to denote almost any quilted bedspread. Since this down is harvested by hand from vacated nests, it is in short supply, which is why a kingsize eiderdown duvet costs just under £6,000. What the folk at Windsor Castle would make of this eiderdown bastardised in duvet form is anyone’s guess. Is it the down they are attached to, or the old way of making the bed, with layers of sheets, blankets and an eiderdown on top?
These days the majority of the western world prefers duvets, and they have become luxury items, while eiderdowns can seem old-fashioned. “In the UK, 95% of hotels use a duvet,” says Robin Beaumont, co-founder of luxury bedding company Beaumont & Brown, which supplies the Plaza in New York and the Landmark in London, among others. “People would be shocked if they paid £600 at the Lanesborough and an eiderdown sat there. You’d ring down, wouldn’t you?”
The eiderdown these days rarely contains eider; it has become an umbrella term for almost any quilted bed topping. In order to pass as classy, some hoteliers have their duvets ape the presentational qualities of eiderdowns – tucking in the edges, or laying them on top of a second sheet, which is then folded back over the duvet. As Beaumont points out, laundering eiderdowns is costly and energy-inefficient. Beds configured this way also take ages to make. But maybe this is the point: maybe it’s not the modernity of the duvet, its hygienic or heat-giving properties or its lightness that offends the royal staff. Maybe it is the idea of convenience that seems so tacky.
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