Mancini Debuts for Westgate

By Carole Sloan -- Home Textiles Today, 2/10/2007 12:00:00 AM

New York —

The debut bedding collection by Wesley Mancini for Westgate Home brings to the market an expanded range of fabrics, as well as trims and embellishments.

Mancini, who has had a notable career creating fabrics primarily based on jacquard constructions for the home textiles marketplace as well as jobbers and furniture manufacturers, signed on with Westgate to produce a bedding collection.

"We started with bedding, and quickly expanded it to now include window, accessories, and bath — as a response to the highly successful previews we've had with major retailers," said David Li, ceo of Home Furnishings International, parent of Westgate Home. "It's a collection of great taste at perceived value and very good solutions" for decorating.

The mood of the collection, Li remarked, "is happy harmony, upscale, very pleasant and livable. He's bringing our design efforts to a new level, and we're extremely committed to Wesley's program."

For Mancini, who has won numerous fabric design awards over the years, "My approach was all about the fabric — from the fiber and yarn to the fabric, mixing patterns and solids. The interesting thing was being able to put different fabrics together — but everything for each bed is based on the feature fabric."

While in the past, Mancini's designs for the bedding business were based on the breadth of jacquard and plain woven constructions, his bedding designs now embrace a wide range of fabrics from sheers to burnout velvets, used alone or printed onto jacquards and matelasses. "The mood is very opulent, soft and luxe." he pointed out.

Critical to the new program, he explained, "is that we are now creating our own construction of pillows, trims and dust ruffles." Each bed, he noted, "has its own special pillows that include different techniques like embroideries, appliqués, and Zardoozi beads — which is coiled metal formed into beads."

The color palette, Mancini said, "has lots of red, gold, blue, and taupe." Among his favorites are "multi-colors — gold with peach and olive; rich reds with dark gold accents; silver in velvets and metallic gold."

Product already is available for shipment, Li said, and new orders will be shipped within 12 weeks from date of order. "We have Wesley's people and our people in China working together." Li noted.

Bed pricing is $249 to $299 for queen comforter sets. Window coverings range from $39.99 to $59.99 and are very opulent, including sheers, embroideries, matelasses, and jacquards.