The smart set are turning to Josephine Home for sumptuous bed linen and chic accessories for their homes, yachts and planes. Even luxury hotels are getting in on the act. Meet the woman behind the brand
Slipping in between luxurious bed sheets at the end of a long day can be one of those little moments of pure delight. But for the refined taste of Stephanie Betts, a former City lawyer and banker, the experience was always rather disappointing.
“I just wanted something white and clean, neat and fabulous but I couldn’t find the quality I expected anywhere. If I stayed in a hotel and I liked their bed linen I would buy it immediately, but I thought, if I can’t buy good bed linen so much so that I have to buy it from a hotel then something is missing.”
Named after Betts’ grandmother, Josephine Home is a boutique bed linen and home accessories brand that has turned into one of the most desirable names with which London’s super-wealthy kit out their bedrooms.
Since starting the business in 2003, the product range has grown organically following the needs and requests of clients, all of whom are offered a bespoke service. Duvets are made from Hungarian goose down and New Zealand wool. When private yacht owners sought luxury towels and bathrobes for their vessels, Betts designed super-absorbent, fluffy towels made from pure cotton from the Aegean coast that double in size when you wash them, as well as herringbone linen bathrobes which actually get softer with time. One particularly good client was so taken with the bespoke peony Scottish cashmere blankets that Josephine Home had made for their private jet that they ordered cashmere socks to match. Betts had the sock-maker to the Prince of Wales yarn a few pairs.
No wonder Josephine Home is now the name on the lips of those in the know from well-heeled high-fliers, who visit personally, to top-end hoteliers and hedge funders who now shop nowhere else for their various homes, yachts and planes.
More than half of Josephine Home’s customers are men. “The boats and planes tend to be boys’ toys and there are lots of male customers – although initially you might not expect many men to meddle with bed linen.”
Apart from the sheer quality of the products and materials she sources, Betts’ particular love is colour. “I walk into a room and imagine a colour – and then I have to find the colour. If I can’t find it I have to make it. I like using the in-between colours which are very easy to live with.”
Her inspiration comes from nature – bark peeling on a birch tree, bluebells, the underside of a flower petal. She recently created a bespoke grey bed linen set with an undertone of taupe and lavender. It now adorns the bed in her showroom at the south dome of the Design Centre at Chelsea Harbour in London, where light floods in from the conservatorystyle roof, accentuating the subtle tonal ranges of her products. Rich peonies, plums and charcoals abound throughout the cashmere products and a fresh palette of vivid green, pale blonde yellow and dusty pink is now being introduced.
“We are totally unfashionable,” claims Betts, despite the fact that as we speak a leading interiors magazine is conducting a photo shoot in her showroom. “Our products have to last. It’s like a good pair of jeans or the perfect white shirt. Once you’ve found it you want to stick with it. We want to give people the equivalent of a basic wardrobe but for the home so it’s really your trousseau.”
Her latest foray has been into furniture. A cylindrical bedside table made from a rare mottled wood, which Betts bought years ago, has caught many a client’s eye in her showroom. So much so that it is now being recreated in walnut and cherry wood. A complimentary pear-shaped crystal lamp will also be introduced.
So what does Stephanie Betts sleep in at night – and is thread count, the buzzword among bed bores, really the holy grail? “I prefer the 300 thread count herringbone linen which is marvellous on arm nights. The 600 is so wonderfully silky it actually distracts me from sleeping!” – Jessica Bowen