Million-Dollar Mattress

Why the rich sleep soundly at night

The Hästens store on Madison. Swedish like IKEA, but no meatball lunch.

Growing up, I thought having an automatic garage door opener signified someone was wealthy. Here’s how to tell in 2025:

They have a horsehair mattress.

Specifically, a Hästens mattress. At the top end, they go for $150,000.

Scratch that, I meant $1 million for the Grand Vividus model. I hope delivery is included.

Look but don’t sleep.

You’ll notice that the Grand Vividus is protected from the hoi polloi by velvet ropes, like the entrance to Studio 54. It makes me want to get on it and hop up and down until they call the cops.

I wonder if, when you lie down on it, it whinnies.

Horsetail hair, they write in their catalog, is hollow, and naturally wicks moisture away from our sweaty, mite-infested, skin-shedding bodies.

I heard of Hästens when I lived in Sweden. I thought, they could sell a whole lot of these back home. Then this week I spotted a Hästens store on Madison Avenue. It’s actually one of four locations in ritzy parts of Manhattan, where there’s no shortage of people who can afford a million-dollar mattress or two.

For the only somewhat rich, there’s a starter model, the Marquis, for about $5,240.

Hästens mattresses are hand-made by “bedmasters” using only natural materials: boiled, washed and autoclaved horsetail hair, organic cotton, long-fiber wool, static-resisting flax, slow-growing northern Swedish pine, and 80% recycled steel springs. There is a video on their website describing the complicated process.

In it, “horsetail-hair-rufflers” stand around a station, yes, ruffling horsetail hair. There’s a way to ruffle it just so that takes two years to master. While this job may seem somewhat boring, it’s hard to imagine these folks can be replaced by AI, unlike the rest of us. Soon Swedish parents will be pushing their children away from STEM careers, and into horsetail hair ruffling, as their best chance of staying employed.

Guessing the horses are not big fans of their horsetail hair loss, but the company says its horsetail hair comes from grooming and naturally shed hair, with no harm to them.

I assume they’re given Rogaine to regrow the hair they’ve lost.

While I respect Hästens’ global success, their craft, and the many jobs it’s created in a small town, it seems a little cult-like to me. A sleep cult, dedicated to healthy, restorative sleep for the offshore-account-holding public. The people who need it least, in my bitter, sour-grapes-flavored opinion.

That roped-off mattress put me off, I guess.

They do however invite customers to lie down and see which of their other mattresses work best for them. So bring your pajamas. And your checkbook.

And for Pete’s sake, don’t ask if they have layaway.