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Homeless bedding line should be put to sleep

By Lauren Beckham Falcone
Thursday, November 5, 2009 -
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How do these people sleep at night?

I’m talking about the creators of Home Duvet, the homeless chic line of bedding available at dutchbydesign.com.

And the dopes who buy it.

To the tune of about $200, you can doze like a homeless person - in the comfort of your own bedroom.

The $100, 144-thread-count duvet cover depicts a picture-perfect print of cardboard boxes flattened and taped together. It’s Boston-Common-at-midnight-meets-white-sale.

Then there’s the matching pillow shams ($11 each) and the $70 street sheet - a flat sheet designed to look like pavement.

Sure, 30 percent of the gross profits go to Centrepoint, a UK charity for homeless young people ages 16-25, which might make you feel better about using abject poverty as a decor theme. (What’s next, “crack den” wallpaper, complete with used syringes?)

But the half-baked hipsters who think it’s both ironic and charitable to “sleep under a cardboard box so a homeless person doesn’t have to” (that’s the Web site’s sales pitch) shouldn’t pat themselves on the back too fast. Because these are probably the same self-involved scene-makers who ignored the beggar outside of Mistral last week. “He’ll just spend it on booze,” they may have said as they walked inside and laid down a $20 for a cucumber-infused martini.

Meanwhile, homeless shelters in Boston and across the country are facing budget cuts and a falloff in donations while some misguided do-gooder pretends he’s sleeping al fresco under the expressway.

“I would never buy anything like that, and we would not be an organization that would take the proceeds,” said Barbara Trevisan, spokeswoman for the Pine Street Inn. “If you care about the issue of homelessness, we appreciate it. And you can make your checks out directly to the organization.”

No word from Dutch By Design about how sales are going.

Home Duvet is just the latest gaffe by companies who claim to want to raise awareness of homelessness while making a buck.

Doll maker American Girl introduced Gwen earlier this year. Her back story (or big secret) was that she lived in a car with her mother for a while after her dad ditched them. But American Girl couldn’t spare a dime of the $95 price tag to actually help homeless shelters.

Even if some of the money goes to charity, Home Duvet’s line of homeless bedding mocks a population it claims to champion. It belittles a group of people who need the most help.

This isn’t “edgy design,” people - it’s just exploitation.

- lbfalcone@bostonherald.com
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Dis-comforter: The makers of Home...
Dis-comforter: The makers of Home Duvet, a new line of homeless chic bedding, donate a percentage of their proceeds to charity while mocking those they claim to help.

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