Why Belgian flax — and not any other.
"There is a four-hundred-mile coastal corridor in northwestern Europe that grows the longest, finest linen fibre in the world. We will not buy from anywhere else, and after you read this, you will understand why."
If you have ever held a length of European linen and a length of linen grown elsewhere — Asian linen, North American linen, even Eastern European linen — you have probably noticed that they feel quite different. The European cloth is heavier in the hand. It drapes differently. It softens with use rather than thinning. The reason for this is not in the loom. It is in the soil.
Flax is a vain plant. It will only grow well in a narrow set of conditions: a cool maritime climate, a long slow rain, and a particular sandy-loam soil that drains quickly. There is one place on earth where these three conditions reliably overlap — and that is the coastal corridor that runs from Caen, in Normandy, north along the Channel, through Belgium, and into the southern Netherlands. About four hundred miles long and forty miles wide. Almost all of the world's heirloom-grade flax is grown here.
The retting
What separates Belgian flax from, say, French flax that has been transported to a Chinese mill, is a process called retting. After the flax is pulled from the ground (it is pulled, not cut, to preserve the length of the fibre), it is laid back down on the field for two to three weeks. During this time, the morning dew and the rain begin to break down the woody outer husk of the stem, releasing the long fibres inside. This process is called dew retting, and it is what gives Belgian linen its characteristic feel.
You cannot replicate dew retting in a tank. You cannot speed it up. You cannot do it at scale. It requires a particular humidity, a particular kind of overnight cool, and weeks of patience. It is what we mean when we say heirloom-grade: this is flax that has been grown, retted, and milled the way it has been for two hundred years.
What this actually means for your bed
It means that the fibre arriving in our mill is, on average, three times longer than the fibre being woven elsewhere. Longer fibres make stronger, smoother cloth. They produce sheets that soften with each wash rather than thinning, that grow more beautiful in their fifth year than they were in their first. They produce a linen that becomes part of the bedroom rather than wearing out of it.
That is why we will not buy flax from anywhere else. There is plenty of cheaper flax in the world. There is no better flax than this.