Kathy Ireland & Arrow Unwrap Bedding

By Michele SanFilippo -- Home Textiles Today, 10/18/2004 12:00:00 AM

New York —

Kathy Ireland Home officially unveiled its first bedding line by Arrow Home Fashions at the New York Home Textiles Market last week.

The easy care Kathy Ireland Home by Arrow Home Fashions collection offers deep-pocket sheets, comforters, duvets, quilts, throws, down products, window treatments, decorative pillows, sleep pillows and mattress pads. All 36 new top-of-bed patterns coordinate with rugs by Shaw Living, the company's first soft home licensee in 1999.

“We are trying to provide total home solutions for busy moms who have been severely underserved and have a limited window of opportunity in which to shop,” Kathy Ireland told HTT, adding that her products should ideally be merchandised together at retail. “If the products we offer don't make her day better and easier, than they don't belong in our brand,” added Ireland, herself a mother of three.

The collection features three pricing tiers: Essentials, $99 to $199 for bed-in-a-bags with 250-count sateen sheeting; Gallery, $179 to $199 for comforter sets and $249 to $299 for bed-in-a-bags with 330-count sateen sheeting; and Heirloom — which includes an offering called Love and Lace — inspired by American brides featuring 350-count sateen sheeting and $600 comforter sets. Gallery represents the lion's share of the collection.

“Based on price point, we are specialty and department store driven with mid to upper mid pricing,” explained Rich Sperber, executive vice president of marketing and operations at Arrow Home Fashions.

The 10 style groups the Kathy Ireland Home by Arrow Home Fashions line addresses are Aloha, Americana, European Country, In Russian Style, Ivory Coast, La Vida Buena, Architectural; Young Attitudes, Jardin du Jour by landscape designer Nicholas Walker evoking outdoor living, and ACafe by Chef Andre Carthen.

The Americana group also includes Heirloom, First Lady and The Quilts of Gee's Bend, a collection of quilts by an African-American women's collective in Gee's Bend, Ala., produced between the 1920s and 1990s.

The all-cotton, 400-gram reversible quilts, which will retail for $149 queen as 11 reproductions in the new line, make up part of an exhibit that has been touring museums nationwide and will soon travel to Europe and Japan.

“It's a wonderful way for working moms to have a timeless piece of modern American folk art,” added Ireland, stressing that the significance of the quilts will be reflected on the packaging.

Kathy Ireland Home's mission statement is finding solutions for busy moms in all areas of the home.

“I think our mission statement came out of my frustrations from my prior career in modeling. I felt that these women were not being catered to in magazines or retail stores. I always felt that I was at the wrong end of the (business) and knew that when we had our brand it needed to be real and serve real customers,” Ireland said.

Monica Lowe Graves, design director at Arrow, said, “Kathy's got a keen eye on what the busy mom is looking for in terms of color, pattern and texture for every room in the house.”