When towels become haute couture From Balenciaga's "beach towel couture" to Ludovic de Saint Sernin's sexiness

Unless you indulge in the bohemian habits of surfers, no mere mortal would think of wearing a towel outside the bathroom at home or on the beach. But terry cloth, a humble material that made the leap into mass production at the beginning of the last century and became the main material used in our towels, was often adopted in the past to make far more formal garments than a bikini cover. From athleisurewear to haute couture, from Balenciaga's SS24 towel skirts to Daniel Lee's draped dresses at Bottega Veneta, designers have often drawn inspiration from the terrycloth's versatility, which is as commonplace as it is unprecedented. Terry cloth does not often appear on the catwalk, but when it does, it steals the show from far classier fabrics.

More recently, Bottega Veneta has lined its famous pouch clutches with this soft fabric, as well as pastel tote bags from Miu Miu, a brand that has already 2017 dedicated an entire collection to terry cloth garments, embellished with 1970s patterns and bright colors. Brands like Loewe, Prada, Moschino, Acne Studios, and Jacquemus have also released summer dresses in terry cloth. While J.W. Anderson showed a blue toweling tote look for spring 2015, model Silte Haken wore a white towel wrapped tightly around her left hip paired with a shell and pearl necklace and a pair of woven loafers at Miuccia Prada's Positano show. Daniel Lee played with the draped lines of bath towels to create dramatic outfits in the ruins of the Michigan Theatre in Detroit in 2021, while Balenciaga instead flirted with "beach towel couture" by creating towel skirts for SS24, having already experimented with towels (albeit cashmere) for FW23 in Paris. While the towel was primarily synonymous with glamorous escapism in the middle and end of the century (think of the Vogue pictures of Countess Brandolini d'Adda in her Venetian palace in 1966), the hedonistic dimension was never entirely lost in the years that followed. Proof of this is Ludovic de Saint Sernin, who showed off an (otherwise naked) model in a beige terrycloth thong. Sexy, comfortable, sophisticated, or irreverent, no matter how you want to interpret it, the terrycloth is a must (especially in summer).