Don't You Frette My Dear

I just got through doing my ironing, so I am good for another 6 months before I attack the pile of linens. I have only myself to blame for being a slave to my iron now. You see, I wised up several years ago and stopped buying anything that required ironing in terms of my wardrobe. It was just reality setting in. If it needed to be ironed in order to wear it, I knew it would mean I just wouldn’t wear it. So I stopped buying it.

Unfortunately, my utilitarian logic where ironing was concerned went right out the window when I fell in love with fine linens, especially linen napkins, tea towels, table cloths and unfortunately, expensive linen sheets.

If right about now you are question what the big deal is with respect to linen sheets, it is obvious to me you do not own any. You see, in a moment of what I now like to remember as linen-induced lunacy, I decided to spoil myself and treat myself to Frette linen sheets for my birthday with money that my in-laws had given me.

I researched Frette linen sheets extensively. I had seen them in my home type magazines and in fine hotels. I was taken in by the fact that one of the ads said that they were favored by the British royal family. Being an anglophile and a linen lover, I was sold.

Well, I never did stop to thing about the fact that the royal family can favor these sheets because they have an army of domestic servants to iron the darn things out. The fact that I would become a slave to these linen sheets never crossed my mind at all. Who ever heard of ironing sheets? Well, the rest of the world and me, until I washed the Frette sheets upon arrival. My one year of college Italian was long ago, but I would wager a bet that ‘Frette’ actually means ‘sucker’ in Italian.

Let me tell you, those sheets get more wrinkled than my forehead when I am trying to figure out how to download a photo from my cell phone to my computer. I am stuck. I have forked over LOTS of money for these sheets, so I need to get my money’s worth, but that means having to iron the darn things so they don’t look like wrinkled rags on my bed. I grudgingly iron them so I can use them. However, I can tell you, I don’t use them often.

In another episode of linen-induced lunacy (yes, it is unfortunately chronic and most dangerous at the acute phase when there is imminent danger of financial ruin) I purchased Yves Delormes linen sheets. I must say, the French have it all over the Italians when it comes to fine linen sheets. Those Italian Frette sheets are what I would consider one ply to Yves Delormes two ply sheets. Sure, I have to iron the Yves Delormes pillow cases, but there it ends. I can get away with just putting the other sheets on the bed. Not so with the Frette linens. Every piece looks like a wrinkled rag unless it is laboriously ironed until the person doing the ironing has broken out into a steamy sweat.

Come to think of it, that is probably why the British royal family favors the Frette linens. Just by having them on their beds they are effectively saying to the world that they have a palace full of servants engaged full time in ironing the heck out of those wrinkled sheets.
Just by having them on my bed, on the other hand, I am telling the world that I am a sucker, pathetically trying to indulge my linen-induced lunacy and to imitate the British royal family when everyone knows that I am the serf that has become a slave to those sheets.