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What are the best-dressed chefs wearing these days? How about the best-dressed kitchen? If you don't know the answer, you're missing out on a fast-growing gift category perfect for the gourmet specialty store.

Kitchen textiles and chef apparel make stylish statements in consumers' homes. Make their style your style by complementing your inventory with trend-setting textiles, a logical extension of the home entertainment trend.

In Vogue

Aprons were originally designed to protect clothing from spills and insulate the body from burns and scalds. By the fifteenth century, cooks sported true aprons, long and white. Generally, most chefs prefer white aprons since dark colors give the subconscious impression that the apron is dirty.

However, for home chefs, colors and styles are much more important. You may not see the models in Milan runways donning the newest apron styles and sauntering down the runways, but these bibbed beauties comprise a booming business at retail.

Mary Ellen Hogan, owner of Arlington Heights, Ill.-based Urban Harvest, said nearly all apron sales in her specialty food store are purchased as gifts and the best-selling designs are ones for kids. Hogan stocks eight children's styles in the store, as well as adult aprons.

"Surprisingly, children's aprons with cute little themes sell really well. Grandparents especially love to buy them to get their grandchildren acquainted with the kitchen," she said. "Children use them for arts and crafts, as well as cooking. Everyone is cocooning and spending time at home and parents are looking for things to do with children. Cooking together is a fun activity."

Theresa Booker, owner of Milton, Fla.-based For The Kitchen, said she can't believe the success she has had selling the contents of her apron inventory. The aprons hang simply on a slat wall in the rear of her store.

"We sell them like crazy. They have just blown out the door," Booker said. "It really surprised me. Women come in and buy them when they are entertaining because they're pretty. They offer so many lovely designs, people don't mind wearing them anymore."

Teresa Adams-Tomka, coowner of Kitchen Collage in Urbandale, Iowa, limits her chef apparel inventory to aprons. Her customers seek butcher aprons in a variety of designs, mainly sophisticated patterns with kitchen friendly images such as fruits and flowers. Product mix is determined by size and shape, and Adams-Tomka said she tries to provide various lengths and larger sizes for men.

"Bridgewater is an English company that has tabletop, but they also make aprons. It's one of the largest aprons we could find," she said. "They're expensive, but they are a great fabric."

Booker also limits the apparel she carries. Still, chef hats are an apparel item in which her customers express interest. Today's chef has a variety of fashions to choose from for fashioning a distinctive appearance.

Scott Justvig, owner of Indianapolis-based Corner Gourmet, created a program for culinary students entering their first year at the local vocational school. Justvig suits up students with a starting chef apparel uniform, while also providing them with discounts on basic clothing throughout their education.

"We figure if we can get them while they are in culinary school, we've got a pretty good chance of keeping them when they graduate," he said. "When they get that first paycheck, they'll come in and see us. That's part of the reason we carry chef apparel."

Justvig said purchases aren't limited to professionals. Consumers are buying a large amount of the apparel he stocks. Some products like chef pants, for example, sell better to professionals than home chefs, but consumers are beating a path to his door for chef's clogs.

"We keep houndstooth pants in stock and we'll special order the prints and fun stuff. The best plan is to keep a good supply of sizes. All of a sudden, a chef realizes they forgot to do the laundry the night before and they have to show up for work, so they pick up a pair on the way in," he said.

Chef jackets sell well to both consumers and professionals. After testing several styles, Justvig relies on cotton/polyester blend chef jackets to produce most of the business. Hats, too, have become a prosperous venture.

"We carry chef hats from Harold Import and everybody and their brother are buying these things. I keep six to eight in inventory at any given time because they turn over so well," he said.

An area Justvig wants to expand is his children's chef apparel market.

He explained, "I could do a much better job with the apparel for kids. I need to wrap my arms around that because I think I am missing the boat."

One way to market chef apparel is to tell the story behind each item in your newsletters. Not only will you give your customers some interesting anecdotes, but you'll subtly inform them that you're their resource for chef apparel.

The toque, for example, has been one of the most distinctive features of the chef's uniform for over a thousand years. Assyrian chefs wore hats styled after the king's crown, a special privilege bestowed upon them due to the importance of their role in the royal household. In essence, the chef was the main defense against one of the day's most popular forms of treachery — poisoning. Ultimately responsible for the king's safety, the chef's word was absolute law in the kitchen, and he required every person involved in the meal preparation to sample the food before it was presented to the king. As a rule, chefs were of royal blood and were paid lavishly, enjoying court rank and receiving extensive land grants upon retirement.

Chef jackets were designed to allow the chef to maintain a clean appearance — when one flap gets dirty, the flaps reverse so the clean side shows. Long sleeves protect against splashing hot liquids and from direct contact with hot oven doors, and the double layer of the jacket's fabric provides additional protection from scalds and burns. The jackets also provide convenient places to store thermometers and other instruments.

Chefs' checked trousers serve to disguise the inevitable spots that are acquired while cooking — generally, blue-and-white checks are worn in Europe and black-and-white ones in the United States. In Australia, blue-checked pants are usually favored by pastry chefs. Today, professional chefs and home chefs alike may choose from a wide range of fashions — from basic checks to fun, wild patterns.

The Agony of de Feet

Another apparel category you may want to consider stocking inventory for is clogs. With the evolution of specific footwear for chefs, practicality once again dictated the fashion. For instance, chefs covering up food stains and burns on their clogs with soot-black and animal grease coined the term Black Chef Clog. Bakers rubbed white chalk on their clogs to eliminate flour marks; hence, the term White Pastry Chef Clog.

Provide your customers with a sense of need. Though the history of chef's clogs is fun, their function is even more important. Create an in-store flier promoting the safety, style, and functionality of chef clogs. Fun facts for wooden clogs include: Wood is a natural insulator from hot kitchen floors. Leather and man-made materials do not have the same insulating effect, and fatigue from heat is much more apparent. Foot fatigue occurs when the foot comes down to a different articulation with each step. Wood, easily shaped to the foot's proper anatomical form, maintains its form — man-made and leather materials do not. Plus, open-backed footwear can be kicked off immediately if hot liquids are spilled, an invaluable safety feature. The raised heel of a clog induces a slight flex in the knee. When working from your waist up, it is imperative that the knee is in a flexed position as the flex relieves stress from the lower back and legs. Fatigue may be reduced up to 33% through the maintenance of proper work posture. A rocker-shaped toe segment on a properly formed wooden clog allows the chef to walk toe to heel, the recommended step process for minimal foot and leg fatigue.

Says Justvig of Casual Gourmet, "The salesman from Chef Revival conned me into bringing in their clogs. I was skeptical, but I have to tell you, I am turning clogs! At first I thought I was selling to the chef market, but no, it's all the Food Network's wanna-bes. I'm selling 40 percent to the professional market and the other 60 percent to consumers."

Whatever the fashion, the age-old traditions of safety, practicality, and comfort being paramount for the chef still holds true today.

The Dish

Consumers are also purchasing trendy dish towels. In today's tight economic climate, three-pack dish towel sets provide consumers with cost-effective and stylish hostess gifts. Booker said kitchen textiles are hot sellers as gifts for everything from Father's Day to weddings.

"We do really well with dish towels," Booker said. "A style that I can't keep in stock is flour-sack towels. They come tied up in twine and it's amazing how well they sell."

Booker merchandises her dish towel collection in an old-fashioned kitchen pantry. The antique display may also be luring customers who are leaning toward retro and vintage purchases. As in other home-decor arenas, vintage is pumping up sales in kitchen textiles as well.

"The vintage designs are the best-selling items," Booker said. "People just love the designs from the old-time '50s kitchen."

Adams-Tomka has had great success with dish/hand towels. Most purchases are for gifts, but some items such as flour-sack towels are bought for the customer's own home use.

"People ask for flour-sack towels," she said. "We're in Iowa and they remember their mothers or grandmothers using them."

Adams-Tomka's functional kitchen textile items also garner good response.

"What I sell most successfully is washcloths, hand towels, aprons, and hot pads," she said. "We carry hand towels that have a 'hand' to them. The feel of the fabric is plush. They may be more expensive, but if people are sophisticated enough, they know that the feel means good quality and it will perform well."

As far as textured products, these days, consumers are leaning toward linen and linen-styled lines. A successful style for Booker is a nonwaffle cotton weave, which she said resembles linen. Sets of these designs are selling as gifts for many occasions, including weddings.

Booker has been hearing great responses from other retailers about oilcloth kitchen textiles that are gaining popularity — Martha Stewart recently plugged them. Oilcloth is a substantial, sturdy fabric that is durable and wipes clean. New technology has created a material that was once made by block printing canvas or linen with linseed oil and paint; ultimately, it cracked and peeled with age. This production method became obsolete with the introduction of noncracking plastics and new printing techniques. New styles include vinyl permeated woven cotton meshes that are available in floral and fruit designs, gingham, tattersall, novelty prints, and solids. The recommended cleaning method for all products is to wash them with a warm, soapy sponge and then dry them with a soft cloth.

New technology is not limited to small electrics — bear in mind recent improvements have been made in textile materials and designs. Stocking some interesting culinary books in your chef apparel section might drive customers to purchase clothing as gifts. Create your own gift sets by packaging a toque and apron with The Curious Cook by Harold McGee (North Point Press, 1990), or Cooks, Gluttons and Gourmets by Betty Wason (Doubleday, 1962). Invite children into the kitchen by matching kid-sized utensils with kid-sized cookbooks and aprons.

Be sure to point out your chef apparel and kitchen textiles to bridal couples during the gift registry process. Another great merchandising opportunity is Father's Day. Create a "Best-Dressed Dad" contest, asking customers to submit photos of their fathers donning their best chef apparel. Award the winning dad a new chef's jacket and apron. You can design so many fashionable contests and promotions around this category — the hardest part is selecting your favorite. Whatever you decide, it's time to suit up for great kitchen textile sales.