Slipcovers, the Old-School Sofa Refreshers, Are Finally Getting a Refresh
Gone are the saggy, neutral slip-jackets that swallowed up 1990s sofas. To cloak a couch stylishly in 2023, mix contrasting fabrics or add a kicky short skirt.
Gone are the saggy, neutral slip-jackets that swallowed up 1990s sofas. To cloak a couch stylishly in 2023, mix contrasting fabrics or add a kicky short skirt.
YOU MIGHT think of slipcovers as a saggy, dun-coloured signature of shabby chic, that ’90s decor style. In 2023, however, designers are rethinking the concept, with tailored box pleats, clever closures, contrasting fabrics and kicky short skirts distinguishing the best examples. “Slipcovers are experiencing something of a revival just now,” said Ben Pentreath, a London-based interior and architectural designer. Here’s a strategy guide:
Imagine you couldn’t change your clothes without professional help. Such is the sartorial fix in which upholstered furniture finds itself. One workaround: removable slipcovers tailored to fit over sofas or chairs, and give them a new attitude. “A slipcover can change the mood and feeling of the piece itself,” said Cris Briger, interior designer and co-owner of Casa Gusto, a home-design shop in West Palm Beach, Fla. She clad a pair of stuffy, traditional settees in a jaunty striped cover whose flirty skirt still shows a bit of wooden leg and whose tie closures make no attempt to be discreet. “The slipcovers gave them all this personality they could never have with upholstery,” she said.
Such covers both hide existing wear and protect furniture that typically sees far more action than, say, a guest bed. “There’s something so infinitely practical about being able to take a cover off and get it cleaned,” said Mr. Pentreath, “especially for any sofa which dogs sleep on, which is all sofas.”
The best makeover candidates? Sturdy, high-quality seats that simply need a refresh. Ideal fabrics include washable cottons, canvas, linens and classic chintz. “I’ve always done slipcovers seasonally,” said Ms. Briger. “When you’re covering up a wool sofa, it’s awfully nice to do polished-cotton stripes for the summertime.”
To ensure his covers don’t shrink catastrophically upon cleaning, Mr. Pentreath prewashes at a high temperature the material that will be used. The process has a bonus flattering effect on “most chintz fabrics,” he said. “It gives them an instant sense of that elusive and much dreamed-of age.”
Slipcovers, impermanent by definition, also free you up to experiment, he notes. You can forgo the long-term practicality of safe performance fabrics and give your sofa a polka-dot-cotton spring or a tweedy, textured fall.
Beyond the cost of fabric, labor to make a sofa slipcover with cushions can cost $1,200, an armchair $500. And some upholstered pieces are ill-suited for a wardrobe change. “Tufted furniture looks bumpy with a cover, so I wouldn’t recommend it,” said Albert Nakash of Bettertex, a New York City textile workshop. “Slipcovers can work for most shapes, but pieces with straight lines make for a nicely tailored fit.
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Competitive pressure and creativity have made Chinese-designed and -built electric cars formidable competitors
China rocked the auto world twice this year. First, its electric vehicles stunned Western rivals at the Shanghai auto show with their quality, features and price. Then came reports that in the first quarter of 2023 it dethroned Japan as the world’s largest auto exporter.
How is China in contention to lead the world’s most lucrative and prestigious consumer goods market, one long dominated by American, European, Japanese and South Korean nameplates? The answer is a unique combination of industrial policy, protectionism and homegrown competitive dynamism. Western policy makers and business leaders are better prepared for the first two than the third.
Start with industrial policy—the use of government resources to help favoured sectors. China has practiced industrial policy for decades. While it’s finding increased favour even in the U.S., the concept remains controversial. Governments have a poor record of identifying winning technologies and often end up subsidising inferior and wasteful capacity, including in China.
But in the case of EVs, Chinese industrial policy had a couple of things going for it. First, governments around the world saw climate change as an enduring threat that would require decade-long interventions to transition away from fossil fuels. China bet correctly that in transportation, the transition would favour electric vehicles.
In 2009, China started handing out generous subsidies to buyers of EVs. Public procurement of taxis and buses was targeted to electric vehicles, rechargers were subsidised, and provincial governments stumped up capital for lithium mining and refining for EV batteries. In 2020 NIO, at the time an aspiring challenger to Tesla, avoided bankruptcy thanks to a government-led bailout.
While industrial policy guaranteed a demand for EVs, protectionism ensured those EVs would be made in China, by Chinese companies. To qualify for subsidies, cars had to be domestically made, although foreign brands did qualify. They also had to have batteries made by Chinese companies, giving Chinese national champions like Contemporary Amperex Technology and BYD an advantage over then-market leaders from Japan and South Korea.
To sell in China, foreign automakers had to abide by conditions intended to upgrade the local industry’s skills. State-owned Guangzhou Automobile Group developed the manufacturing know-how necessary to become a player in EVs thanks to joint ventures with Toyota and Honda, said Gregor Sebastian, an analyst at Germany’s Mercator Institute for China Studies.
Despite all that government support, sales of EVs remained weak until 2019, when China let Tesla open a wholly owned factory in Shanghai. “It took this catalyst…to boost interest and increase the level of competitiveness of the local Chinese makers,” said Tu Le, managing director of Sino Auto Insights, a research service specialising in the Chinese auto industry.
Back in 2011 Pony Ma, the founder of Tencent, explained what set Chinese capitalism apart from its American counterpart. “In America, when you bring an idea to market you usually have several months before competition pops up, allowing you to capture significant market share,” he said, according to Fast Company, a technology magazine. “In China, you can have hundreds of competitors within the first hours of going live. Ideas are not important in China—execution is.”
Thanks to that competition and focus on execution, the EV industry went from a niche industrial-policy project to a sprawling ecosystem of predominantly private companies. Much of this happened below the Western radar while China was cut off from the world because of Covid-19 restrictions.
When Western auto executives flew in for April’s Shanghai auto show, “they saw a sea of green plates, a sea of Chinese brands,” said Le, referring to the green license plates assigned to clean-energy vehicles in China. “They hear the sounds of the door closing, sit inside and look at the quality of the materials, the fabric or the plastic on the console, that’s the other holy s— moment—they’ve caught up to us.”
Manufacturers of gasoline cars are product-oriented, whereas EV manufacturers, like tech companies, are user-oriented, Le said. Chinese EVs feature at least two, often three, display screens, one suitable for watching movies from the back seat, multiple lidars (laser-based sensors) for driver assistance, and even a microphone for karaoke (quickly copied by Tesla). Meanwhile, Chinese suppliers such as CATL have gone from laggard to leader.
Chinese dominance of EVs isn’t preordained. The low barriers to entry exploited by Chinese brands also open the door to future non-Chinese competitors. Nor does China’s success in EVs necessarily translate to other sectors where industrial policy matters less and creativity, privacy and deeply woven technological capability—such as software, cloud computing and semiconductors—matter more.
Still, the threat to Western auto market share posed by Chinese EVs is one for which Western policy makers have no obvious answer. “You can shut off your own market and to a certain extent that will shield production for your domestic needs,” said Sebastian. “The question really is, what are you going to do for the global south, countries that are still very happily trading with China?”
Western companies themselves are likely to respond by deepening their presence in China—not to sell cars, but for proximity to the most sophisticated customers and suppliers. Jörg Wuttke, the past president of the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China, calls China a “fitness centre.” Even as conditions there become steadily more difficult, Western multinationals “have to be there. It keeps you fit.”
Chris Dixon, a partner who led the charge, says he has a ‘very long-term horizon’
Americans now think they need at least $1.25 million for retirement, a 20% increase from a year ago, according to a survey by Northwestern Mutual