Hi, any advice on where to buy Egyptian sheets for one's bed, I apologise for asking such a question on Fodors but when I googled it all I got was percale etc sheets which one can get here in UK: I want proper old-fashioned cotton sheets. My sheets which I bought in Zimbabwe are now getting old, Zimbabwe used to produce cotton before they threw all the farmers off the land, and these are lovely sheets. I am going to Egypt next week and thought I could buy some decent sheets there- shall be in Cairo, Luxor and Aswan.
Any advice would be appreciated, thanks in advance.

Try here

https://nillens.com/

There are tons of cotton stores in Cairo and Aswan, and if you are on a tour, you'll almost certainly be taken to one. If not, you can easily find one by taking a taxi or Uber from your hotel (and your hotel concierge will likely have a preferred store where you can get a little discount and they can get a little commission). I visited one such store on my recent trip to Egypt, but I thought the prices were outrageous for sheets (beginning at $150 to $200 a set, which is quite expensive for the US, but perhaps not for the UK).

John Lewis have no less than 25 options for Egyptian bed sheets.

The White Company has several choices too.

So does Habitat. And Tesco, Sainsburys, Harrods, Fenwicks and many more...They are everywhere in the UK, can't imagine why you cannot find them.

thursday, nope, those are exactly what I don't want, I don't want the brushed 400 thread type sheets, I want unbrushed cotton.

Sorry, all - I've seen all those sheets here in the UK, I want proper old fashioned cotton.
Anyway, thanks!

Hahah, Doug, $200 for a pair of sheets - maybe they were chancing it!

Yes, I think they saw Doug coming! Reminds me of the silk rugs I saw in Delhi.

Patricia, do you know a source that still exists in Zimbabwe; I will not be in Harare, so might make it more elusive. Do they still even manufacture sheets in Zim??

OP PB,
The American chain KOTN sources their cotton from Egypt. Maybe an email query to them would give you some useful direction?
I am done. The soft sweatshirt.

Hi ekscrunchy, I don't live in zimbabwe any more, have been gone for many years although my home is still there. Cotton is no longer grown there, the Mugabe regime got rid of all the productive farmers, and were meant to redistrubute the farms to black farmers (which is fine) but then gave them to their cronies, and they did nothing with them. Zimbabwe was a strong agriculture-oriented economy and it was totally destroyed.
By the way ekscrunchy I really enjoyed your food recommendations for Barcelona, printed them out, and took in a lot of the places you recommended last Easter, love Barcelona!

Patricia I was afraid your answer would be something along those lines. I was silly to even ask the question. So sad. Is anything at all even grown there at this point? Are there any white farmers left, or are any of the crony-owned farms productive? I think I know the answers to those as well but hope I am incorrect.

I'm glad you like the food threads!

ekscrunchy, people are amazingly nice there, both black and white, it was only Mugabe who tried to drive a wedge between the races. There are a few white farmers left on the land, mainly they have left, gone to South Africa, Mocambique (I wonder if that cyclone's damage recently wasn't exacerbated by the Chinese total cutting down of all the trees in Mocambique, that is a tragedy, talk of Brazil and this new president wanting to get industry going in the Amazon forests - and no-one cares about Africa!), many are now working with the few black farmers, helping them so they can farm more commercially and not only for their own consumption, some even went to Nigeria, New Zealand too - it's a huge diaspora. You could ask on Zimvine, maybe one can get those sheets I want.
Have to dash to catch my 'plane to Cairo, and there's huge disruption here in London with the climate change protesters!

You cannot buy Egyptian cotton sheets in Egypt-at least not the premium high-quality Egyptian cotton sheets you find abroad.
Strange I know. But almost all the long-staple A grade cotton produced in Egypt is exported.
You can find normal sheets in Egypt but they're nothing to write home about. I recently had a friend who insisted on buying Egyptian cotton sheets-we went to an ordinary shop in Alexandria and all we found were regular sheets used by most Egyptians, not the luxury cotton ones.