More than a decade ago, unexpectedly living on and off in France, I fell for the genre of pillows called traversins. Bolsters, basically. The long, narrow cushions that span the width of the headboard are a fixture of classic bedding. They are props — good for snuggling and sleeping with and for support while reading (“They fill that angle between mattress and headboard which eats pillows,” as Rough Linen says of its bolster and covers), watching TV, and working in bed.
I’d scoop up pretty vintage cotton or linen pillowcases for traversins at flea markets on the Côte d’Azur. When the older women who were invariably selling them questioned me — “Do you know what this is for?” — I’d stammer, “J’adore les traversins!” I kept one of the pillows at the head or foot of my bed in Long Island City for years before moving to France for keeps.
Note: Often, le traversin is interchangeably called le polochon. I knew that polochon was not as nice of a word but didn’t know why, so I recently texted a French girlfriend about this. “Is it because polochon sounds like torchon (dishcloth)?” I asked. “Most likely so!!!” Salomé replied. “-chon things sound peasantlike.” Examples include cochon (pig), cornichon (pickle), nichon (tit), and ronchon (grumpy). “In one fairy tale by Perrault, the mean sister is called Fanchon,” she said — allowing that the pillows “do look like sausages.” Things got more interesting from there, as Salomé informed me via follow-up: (1) Flounder is named Polochon in Disney’s both animated and live-action French-dubbed Little Mermaid, and (2) while polochons are defined by the Trésor de la Langue Française as cylindrical traversins, some regard them differently, as shorter and firmer and/or not for actual sleeping on. They are like torpedos. “In a pillow fight, I would choose the polochon over the traversin in a heartbeat,” she said.
In any case, I’d left my enormous pillow mostly accurately called a traversin behind in New York. A couple of years later, when my husband’s friend lent me her maternity pillow in my third trimester, I wondered how I’d ever given these things up. “It’s essentially a pregnancy pillow, right?” the L.A. interior designer Sally Breer said on a phone call about the increasingly popular oversize bolster/body-pillow typology. I keep seeing bigger bolsters for sale and appointed by interior designers. (See here, here, here, here, and here.)
We’ve been using a linen body pillow for a couple of years. Like the maternity pillow, many bolsters — flattened or otherwise — are now big enough to constitute body pillows. Consider, for example, Crisp Sheets’s “side pillow” in this Tencel watercolor-y print. Schoolhouse is tendering flat bolsters like this one; Perigold has some sewn from Berber-woven textiles (here); and, at the high end, the Austrian textile artists Susanne Schneider and Johannes Schweiger run up bolsters shaped like giant arms (in high-end textiles that include Steiff’s faux mohair).
[Ed. note: Crisp Sheets lists its prices in Euro; the USD price shown is an approximation.]
The latest subgenre of bolster is tubular and designed to be formed into knots: The NYC-based Mexican-American designer Jeanette Reza, who is behind Jiu Jie, started making large knottable bolsters for family and friends in 2018, after moving to NYC from Shanghai, then saw them take off during the pandemic. She uses deadstock designer fabrics sourced in Manhattan’s garment district for limited runs, called Tie Me Ups, in four sizes. (See here and here.) The Big Boy Knot — her XL size — is “more of a floor cushion,” she said.
A couple of years later, Breer came upon a reference from the ’70s: a Twiggy-like model sat on a sofa that looked as if a giant noodle had been installed in the loft. She began fabricating ten-foot-long bolsters — named Noodles — from deadstock such as woven jacquard that she finds in L.A.’s fashion district. They’re one of a kind and down-filled and retail for $856. “We make no money on them,” Breer, who sells them almost at cost, said happily. “I love having something that’s so big — free and loose and elegant. You can interact with it.”
Breer’s elevated body pillows are built like the ones from Bearaby, called the Cuddler ($199; stuffed with plant-derived Melofoam), and Buffy, called the Wiggle (on sale for $93; stuffed with upcycled BPA-free plastic bottles). Their covers are sold separately. On Etsy, I recently bought my daughter a smaller version of reused denim by a maker in Brooklyn. Target is selling a knot-able body bolster, too, for about 80 bucks.
There are other permutations of the bolster. The L.A. costumer–slash–prop- and puppet-maker Sara Paquette designs custom earthworm-shaped body bolsters around 6.5 feet long — with touches like green velvet eye makeup and Italian wool tweed. Pufl — which was behind the human dog bed — will launch the Hugl, a U-shaped cooling body pillow, at the end of the month ($175). And Now You Sleep, a Danish brand, offers a comma-shaped body pillow in three firmnesses, plus an illustrated guide to the pillow’s applications. These pillows all generally remind me of the “wetsuit mamas” used to nurse injured or orphaned baby seals. A little life support is a beautiful thing.
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