Whether it’s purple carrots and Rancho Gordo beans, a perfectly weathered Barbour jacket or an exorbitantly priced handbag (ahem, “investment piece”) these days, there’s a lot of discussion about “heirloom.” If you aren’t lucky enough to have had a grandmother, great aunt or even an older friend with exquisite taste, getting your hands on some of these mythical cast-offs can be quite tricky. Add to that the fact that these ladies represent a generation of women who seemed to have been born with built-in Quality Meters and you, the 21st Century Girl, may be in an even greater deficit. And, the truth is this: our grandparents are right that ‘they’ don’t make them like they used to.
Which is where we are when we first meet DKNYPure, a collection of simple, mostly white, 100% cotton bedding that have an attention to detail and careful-feeling construction that far outpaces the majority of their peers. True to Donna Karen’s brand aesthetic, overall the pieces are modern, sleek and comfortable and yet they also feel cozy, not necessarily urban and just faintly traditional.
Across the various current collections — Inspiration, Enchantment, Innocence and Romance — the design emphasis seems squarely concerned with different embellishment and construction techniques. Each piece has careful handwork, like gentle pin-tucks, soft ruching or simple lattice embroidery, which conveys a feeling of thoughtfulness and old-fashioned good quality. Stark, boxy finishes assiduously avoid any faint associations with Laura Ashley that all this fanciness might kick up. Fabrics are soft to the touch, but vaguely stiff and starchy, like they’ll stay with you for decades and an almost entirely white palette means that, though the collections carry certain themes, assembling a bed from each makes for cozy, beautiful textures.
