Unpicking the power of the 1990s most popular duvet cover

It was the pattern found on beds across Aotearoa, a deep midnight blue background covered with yellow celestial motifs, sometimes the suns, moons, and stars had cheerful faces, other times not. There were myriad iterations, each differing slightly depending on the brand, but all were similar enough that it could be considered a phenomenon. It’s a fad so familiar that a description is enough to jog the memory.

Everyone had it, and if you didn’t, you wanted one. Where did they come from? Most people I canvassed recall theirs being bought from Farmers, Briscoes, Harvey Norman and The Warehouse. I grew up in Australia and had one too, from Myer or Spotlight. Meanwhile, across the Pacific Ocean, North Americans were apparently buying theirs from the likes of Hanes, Haywin, Sears and Highland Feather.

They were the hottest thing to have. For my demographic — elder Millennials — they’re now imbued with naïveté and innocence, but at the time, they seemed so worldly, so sophisticated. Owning one felt like a first step on the road to a life that would include velvet clothes, expert kohl application, travel and a loft apartment to come back to.

Celestial motifs are both “New Age” and “old world”, drawing from an ancient iconography. Suns with faces were popular in European heraldry; alchemists used celestial symbols; suns can be seen in Huichol art and Kashani pottery; the Inca worshipped sun god Inti, and their representations gave him a face.

By the 1990s, culturally, the Anglosphere was in the throes of a renewed fascination with “The East” (including fashion) and alternative ideologies and practices — astrology, yoga, incense — and celestial bedding went well with Enigma, Enya and Madonna’s Ray of Light era.

The “Second Summer of Love” had dawned in 1989, and the years that followed saw a revival of the 1960s and 1970s. Heliocentrism found a home in the sun worship of backpacking culture. In fashion, woo-woo and globetrotting iconography abounded; the Jean Paul Gaultier Soleil line even had a sun in its logo.

There was “witchy” stuff in the culture too, and people were getting into tarot and sage. Charmed started in 1998, the same year Practical Magic hit cinemas, and both were predated by Buffy a year earlier.

By the end of the decade, space and futurism were in the mix, helped by Hollywood and the looming precipice of the new millennium, so it’s no surprise that this all had filtered down to the manchester section at your local homeware store.

Also at play were distribution and logistics. Because it’s not just about desire, relevance and cool factor, access is needed for something to become widely adopted. The period of the duvet’s rise in popularity marries with a period of growing globalisation, as well as shifts in manufacturing, retail and distribution.

By the 1980s, most of New Zealand’s import tariffs and restrictions were gone, making bringing things into the country cheaper and easier. Retailers and brands started looking offshore for sourcing and manufacturing, and could more easily access and approximate international trends in a way Kiwis could afford.

Fast forward to the late 1990s, and everyone in the country seemingly had the same duvet cover as people across the Pacific Ocean.

Depending on your age at the time, above it were probably glow-in-the-dark stars adorning the ceiling, next to the fly poo, and if you were really, really cool, you had a lava lamp to complement your celestial bedding.

Thirty years on, it has become the subject of many Reddit threads as people try to find proof of their memories. Existing before the widespread adoption of participatory internet, though recently enough to be captured in the dragnet of online sites, relics can be found on eBay and Etsy, Pinterest and forums.

In the contemporary taxonomy of the brilliant CARI (Consumer Aesthetics Research Institute) an “an online community dedicated to developing a visual lexicon of consumer ephemera”, we’d shelve these in Whimsigoth, Global Village Coffee House (both credited to Evan Collins, co-founder of the platform) and Nouveau Organic. Online compatriots Aesthetics Wiki might place them in Spacecore (obviously), FantasY2K and even Utopian Scholastic (originally) categorised by Suze Huldt.)

The decor, a totemic thing for members of several generations, serves as a kind of communal touchstone. Perhaps your mum still has a set in the linen cupboard, but for many, theirs are lost to history. Existing in our memories and pixelated JPEGs only, they’re a kind of liminal ephemera, something we forget about until memories are jogged unexpectedly. But something we all have in common.

Read Emma Gleason's examination of the ubiquitous 90s duvet design in full on her substack, Crust.