Extraordinary Projects That Shaped My Business Newsletter

A letter from Bonnie

Extraordinary Projects That Shaped My Business
Madiba, a rock star, and a yacht.

Eighteen years, a few hundred beds, and the eight I still talk about at dinner.

Miavana, Madagascar  ·  Time + Tide

Architecture by Silvio Rech & Lesley Carstens  ·  Linen by Starch Living

People assume the best part of the business is the fabric. It is not. It is the interesting houses. It is arriving somewhere early in the morning with a car full of boxes, making up a bed that has never been slept in, and standing back and reflecting for a second before anybody else walks in.

Here are the eight I have never stopped thinking about.

One

The first big one

I started with scatter inners. Feathers, downproof, four Juki sewing machines, a fancy overlocker and far more optimism than sense. Then I met Les, in my first factory at 14 Kramer Road, and she gave me my kick starter: the inners, Italian bedlinen, throws, napery. She paid me upfront.

What I remember is not the money. It is somebody deciding to trust me with something far bigger than I had ever made, and every single thing she chose being beautiful. I can still recall the innate joy of it.

Two

Madiba's house

Some jobs you do not talk about while you are doing them. You pack the car, you do the work, you go home, and you say nothing for years.

We made the soft furnishings for Nelson Mandela's home. I will not dress it up with a story about what was said or who was there, because that is not mine to tell. What I will say is that every person in the factory knew exactly where their work was going, and quality control seemed that much more purposeful, because nobody was willing to be the one who let it down.

Three

The actual white-glove service

A family name you would recognise, so that is as much as I will say. Off-white cashmere blankets in every bedroom, crushed linen borders, mitred corners. I will not tell you what cashmere costs a metre. Eye-watering, and I have made up very few in my career.

That job was my ladies' introduction to white gloves at the cutting table and sewing at the machine, so it was the white-glove service in the most literal sense. The bedlinen was 500 thread count percale; the same bedlinen found at Harrods. I learned more about finishing on that job than from any mill or course. When a client expects hand stitching to be invisible, you find out very quickly whether yours is.

Four

Lodges in Africa

Some of our most exclusive lodges cannot be reached by road. Nothing can be replaced quickly, so nothing can be wrong. We keep replacement stock of everything, and we count twice before the truck leaves Kramerville.

I met a chic Swiss woman and her French interior designer when our bedlinen business was still in Parkhurst, and I have never forgotten their philosophy: true luxury is connection, not excess. No frills, no fuss, everything serving a purpose. The brief was a single line, an exquisite night's sleep. A client who understands exactly what we do.

Five

A private island hotel

Off the north-eastern tip of Madagascar, reached by helicopter, where the salt is in the air every hour of every day. Beautiful, and quietly brutal on textiles. Humidity does not care how good your linen is.

Not one duvet anywhere on that island. Only curated sateen sheets, linen throws and waffle cotton. It is the reason I am so particular now about what we specify for coastal and island properties. There is no point sending something exquisite that will not survive its first season.

Six

A yacht in the south of France

Nothing on a boat is square. Not one thing. Every mattress is a shape that exists nowhere else in the world, cut to a hull, with corners that are not perpendicular, and you cannot pop back next week to adjust it because it will have sailed.

I roped in my husband, who is an architect. That job had architectural plans drawn up for the mattresses, the flat sheets and the fitted sheets. Every bedroom had its colour, every bathroom its own towelling, and the swimming towels were exactly what you would want on a yacht. From preparation to installation, perfection.

Seven

A holiday home for a rock star

The brief was not what anybody would have predicted. People who spend their lives in noise and colour want their bedrooms very quiet indeed. And because they live in hotels, the house was curated out of every hotel they had ever loved, gathered into one place.

We signed an NDA, so that is all you are getting.

Eight

A tented camp in the Greater Kruger

Perched on a bend in the river and created by an iconic design duo, the camp is a masterful juxtaposition of nostalgic South African safari style and contemporary 21st-century design. The architect specified the bedlinen herself and specified it perfectly.

Every reorder comes with the same instruction: do not change a thing, every fabric exactly the same. The guest feedback does the rest.

Some of my clients feel I am far too obsessive about this. They may well be right. But I hope they know what joy it gives me to make their things.

Woven in Italy. Crafted in Johannesburg.

Starch Living  ·  Heavenly Feather  ·  Johannesburg, South Africa
starch-living.com  ·  heavenly-feather.co.za