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When was the last time you actually looked at your sheets and felt inspired? Fashion has the power to both inspire and express one’s personality; why not take the same approach to bed? As Harper’s Bazaar’s executive digital director, Lynette Nylander, wrote in her “Why Don’t You…?” monthly column: “Why don’t you… decorate your bed to the standards you would dress yourself for a night out. The same care and dedication should go into sourcing the very best wardrobe for where you spend a third of your life.”
That’s the ethos behind Millaux, founded by Laura Tanzer and Jessica Simpson in 2024. Tanzer’s fashion background includes a Central Saint Martins education, training at Vetements, and haute couture at Balenciaga under Demna. Together with her business partner and wife, Jessica Simpson—who spent her early years globe-trotting as a former professional tennis player (and, in turn, stayed at a number of luxury hotels while competing)—she developed a real sense of what lavish bedding should look and feel like.
“We bring a fashion sensibility to the home, thinking about prints, references, color, and the personality of an object while being equally interested in the intimacy and everyday rituals of domestic life,” share Tanzer and Simpson. “We feel that combination allows us to approach bedding with a little more freedom, taking it seriously as a designed object without taking ourselves too seriously.”
They look for inspiration everywhere around them: “People on the streets, books, magazines, shop windows, museums, a pattern on somebody’s dress, you name it. Everything you see becomes an archive of ideas, which then gets tightly edited down to what feels right for a mood we want to explore. Or, selfishly, a design that is missing in our bedding closet. Some of our main inspirations are vintage wine labels, medieval symbolism, print and fabric archives—and living close to the Met has recently sparked new inspiration too.”
With its Gothic typography and old-world feel, Millaux straddles the line between the linens you’d find inside an old château in the French countryside and a slick modern artist’s loft in Manhattan. The aesthetic is lived-in but still sumptuous, eccentric, and distinct.
Millaux’s prints and patterns give bedding an avant-garde look. And as Tanzer and Simpson put it, “We want our bedding to feel and look delicious.” The collection includes Dalmatian and leopard prints, duvet covers with bold geometric patterns echoing old-world flags, light-sorbet-colored striped linens, and pillowcases decorated with Warholian-style screen-print-like black orchids. The linens are made in Italy from Egyptian-cotton sateen or in Portugal from flax linen and boast an impressive 600-plus thread count. Like couture, every item is made to order and takes about six to eight weeks to produce. Prices range from $180 to $1,420. However, if you’re looking for something completely bespoke, Millaux can do that too. “Haute couture follows this detailed process of design and production; we took this approach especially around personalization,” says Tanzer. “Bedding is often dictated by the sizes, prints, and designs of a brand. We wanted to create a playground for our customers to create products that they are truly excited about and cherish.”
The next time you slip under your covers, consider this: Am I having as much fun getting into bed as I do getting dressed?
