Photos copyright of Sarah Skinner
Sin In Linen
DIY businesswoman Sandy Glaze brings sensuous sheets to a boudoir near you. Skin-tested, Grandma-approved
By Daphne Carr
Published: October 15th, 2004 | 11:50am
“Some people’s eyes light up when I tell them what I do,” said Sandy Glaze. This entrepreneur is something of a maverick in the DIY world, making a product in a major way to try to compete in the billion-dollar industry of bedding.
Glaze makes bed sheets for the swinging set. Currently, her roster contains a retro pin-up design, and she intends to produce other inviting bedfellows in the future. With the resurgence of burlesque and other erotica movements within women’s culture, Glaze is part of a growing population of female retailers selling sex the way we want to buy it — open-ended, celebratory of women, and done with a trustworthy, personal touch. And if someone like Sandy told you she ran a company called Sin In Linen, you’d probably smile too.
Even in childhood, Glaze graced her work with a unique signature touch. “I grew up in Southern California on the beach in the late ‘80s, wearing a tube top on Hermosa Beach. I did my paper route on roller skates,” said Glaze, who recently joined the derby revival as part of the Rat City Rollergirls in Seattle, Washington. Glaze describes herself as an “insanely ambitious” woman who was a “late bloomer” in the business world. While looking for work, Glaze turned her passion for doing “something fun in the basement” into a full-time job.
Glaze got the idea for Sin In Linen in the summer of 2002 when doing something familiar to all of us — staring down a row of products obviously not designed for a young, hip woman. “I stood in front of these hundreds of selections of bedding. ‘Nothing is speaking to me,’ I kept thinking. Even the solids. The prints? Forget it. They were all crafty, flowers, Midwestern.”
And so an idea was born; yet, as with many ideas, it took a night out on the town for the name to be created. “I want to make an erotic bed sheet company,” Glaze told her friends. Although Glaze uses pure cotton, the best fabric for breathable, light sheets, she couldn’t deny the allure of the name Sin In Linen.
“As I did research on production for sheets I realized that they needed to be made out of 110-inch fabric. The minimum orders are high, and you can’t screen print because you’ll feel the ink on your skin. I wanted a sexy image on a soft fabric, printed well, so I found a place in South Carolina to print with a flatbed, 11-color process,” said Glaze.
The key to Sin In Linen’s success is in Glaze’s feel for the softest fabric and eye for the sultriest tease. A coffee table book called The Great American Pin-Up led her to girlie mag guru Louis Meisel, who helped her navigate the tricky world of pre-World War II copyright and secure the Peter Driben image used on her first bed sheet run. The design of Driben’s leggy dame made for good repetition, and the ambiguity of her gesture — a scanty top going on or coming off — is an endlessly enchanting invitation to enter or stay in bed.
Perhaps the provocative nature of her company name is aimed a bit at her competitors. “It’s a large industry and they put out big numbers of product, but it’s an old, staunch industry,” said Glaze. “It feels pretty lonely to be a small business owner, but I’m glad to have had the courage to breathe life into something I believe in, to allow myself to take the risk by not knowing how a project was going to turn out.”
Glaze has become partners with her mother on Sin In Linen, and is expanding the line to include duvet covers and throw pillows for the holiday season. She hopes to create a spring and fall line for 2005. When she’s not planning her sinful future, Glaze can be found networking at textile shows and popping into shops like Toys in Babeland, one of the supportive retailers that “get it.”
“Some people vary on how sexy they think my company should be. Most people realize that it’s fun, flirty, and kitschy — not dirty. I mean, if you wanted to find something in the world that was pornographic, there would be a lot to find before you came to me.
“My grandma had been hearing that I was making girlie bed sheets, and finally someone showed them to her. I was sort of worried when she mentioned them, but then she told me, ‘I like them. I thought that they would have a big vagina on them or something.’”
Photos copyright of Sarah Skinner
Issue #35
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