Whyte Home Fashions Moves to Consumer Market Side via Alliance with Venus Home

Home Textiles Today Staff -- Home Textiles Today, 3/19/2012 2:00:00 AM

NEW YORK - Veteran home textiles designer George Whyte has partnered with Venus Home Fashions to extend his hospitality-oriented fashion bedding programs for the first time to the retail side for consumers.
     Whyte, who for more than 40 years has been designing and developing bedding, draperies, pillows and fabrics, inked the licensing deal with Venus in mid January and from that point, he told HTT, "I got right to work designing and creating" his upscale bedding, decorative pillow and shower curtain line in time for launch this week at market.
     Dubbed "Whyte Home Fashions," his Venus program spans seven top-of-bed collections, 200 decorative pillows - based on 60 designs available in multiple colorways, and eight shower curtains as well as Whyte's patent-pending "Comforlette" product.
     "This is the first time Comforlette is being shown to the retailers for the consumer market," Whyte noted.
     Comforlette is a comforter with a coverlet draped on top, fastened to the comforter at the top with hidden buttons. This design, Whyte said, was originally aimed at helping hotels save money and time in labor, laundry and water usage.
     Whyte has already placed his Comforlette with many of his clients in the hospitality market - "it's been a hit, I've got it placed at hundreds of hotels already," he said - and now hopes its design and easy-care and energy-saving properties will appeal to retailers and their shoppers, too.
     The top-of-bed collections in the Whyte Home Fashions line are all subtly opulent and use rich fabrics for an across the-board elegant story. Each of them including a bed scarf and matching dec pillows, the seven beds are: Impressions, Trudeau, Criss Cross,Reflections, Whisper, Aspen, and Gladstone.
     The broad decorative pillow line marries in part to the beds but also includes independent looks in a variety of luxurious fabrications and designs.
     For the bath, Whyte's eight shower curtains are made to match directly with the beds for a uniform bedroom décor.