Iterating a Better Towel
How ancient technology can be a welcome addition to our modern life
You know, I’m typically writing about how great technology is and how it improves our lives. Today, I thought it would be fun to look at an example of some ancient technology that has become a daily part of my life and I find it far better than the high-tech alternatives.
Towels?
I’m talking about towels, specifically Lithuanian linen towels that have essentially been made the same way for thousands of years.
Seems like an odd thing for me to be writing about? Maybe it is, but I’ve been amazed at how a seemingly mundane daily task like drying yourself after a shower can be so much more enjoyable with a high quality towel. Yes, I write a lot about technology, but part of iterating is exploring better versions of daily items. That often involves new technology, but sometimes it means rediscovering and re-appreciating items that are thousands of years old.
Let’s back up for a minute. Do you even know what your bath towels are made of? If you’re like most people, they’re probably thick, fluffy, and made out of cotton. (Side note, while researching this story, I came across an amazing resource to learn more about the fabrics used in towels. Check it out here if you’re so inclined.) Now, there is nothing inherently wrong with cotton. In regards to towel fabric, it makes a lot of sense. It’s highly absorbent, very soft on the skin, relatively affordable, and it can easily be dyed in a variety of colors. Seems like the perfect fabric to use when drying yourself off right?
Well, yes and no.
Like most people, I used cotton towels for a majority of my life and never really thought twice about it. There are varying qualities of cotton used in these towels, they’re not all created equally. Some can be softer than others or thicker or thinner depending on your preference. I’ve had great and poor cotton towel experiences over the years. But they sometimes take way too long to fully dry. And have you ever packed fluffy cotton towel into a small bag? It just takes up a ton of space. It seems like a waste. And it’s in my nature to question things so I asked myself “are there better ways to dry off after a shower”? How can I get from soaking wet to dry and wearing warm clothes as quickly as possible?
Modern Solutions
Yes, my brain usually jumps to high-tech solutions first. Is there any plausible way to install some sort of “body-size” Dyson Airblade dryer system in my bathroom I thought? Imagine it, you just step out of your shower and you get blasted with a stream of hot air from above, or below, or both! You could just stand there for a minute and you’d be totally dry, no towel needed. It’s not dissimilar to the way your car gets dried as it exits the automatic car wash!
After a quick search I realized that this technology doesn’t exist yet, and probably for good reason. Small Dyson hand dryers are expensive enough, the cost of making something large enough to dry your whole body just isn’t scalable…yet. Maybe it’s something to look forward to in the future. I sure as hell don’t think George Jetson was dragging a piece of cotton over his body to dry off after a shower was he? No, he likely had some sort of high-tech drying system like I’m envisioning.
Ok, so the blow-dryer option is out for now. I then went back to the question of finding a better fabric to use in traditional towel form. There were all sorts of new “high-tech travel towels” in the marketplace that claimed to be just as absorbent as cotton but much thinner and faster drying. This sounded perfect! I ordered a couple of these towels and used them while traveling a few years back.
These could be considered polyester or “micro-fiber” towels. You can see an example of my towel above made by a company called Waves that sadly no longer seems to be in business. They are synthetic and they certainly feel like it. They’re soft, and they do absorb a lot of water, but they had a slick feeling that almost moved too easily across my skin. And yes, they were much lighter to keep in my bag if I had to transport them and they did dry quickly. But this fabric just wasn’t doing it for me. The other major problem with polyester towels is the smell.
Even after regular washes, one of my travel towels absorbed an odor that just wouldn’t go away. Alas, I had to retire it to dog drying duty. My dog Charlie doesn’t seem to mind it, but it wasn’t the longterm towel solution for me.
Outlier Grid Linen
All right, enough of this build up. Let me tell you about the perfect towel that I have found. As I said, these towels aren’t using any modern technology, they are made of Lithuanian linen and they’ve largely been made using the same process for thousands of years. The particular model that got me hooked on this style comes from Brooklyn-based clothing company Outlier.
You can see Outlier co-founders Abe Burmeister & Tyler Clemens speak about why linen makes for a great towel in the video above. I have some amazing clothes from Outlier that I love, but this towel was an unexpected surprise for me. As a company that also makes some high quality linen shirts and pants, it’s no surprise that they found the best linen to use for a towel. They call the fabric “Grid Linen” and they use it in towels of various sizes, a bathrobe, and something called a “beach thing”.
What makes this towel so special? For me it is the grid weave of the linen. It has a slightly rough yet pleasing texture that almost exfoliates your skin while you dry off. And the fabric is incredibly absorbent while still feeling relatively dry to the touch. You almost need to change your drying style in a way. Rather than just haphazardly rubbing a cotton towel all over your body, the linen works better when you dry each body part with a small section of the towel. Barring me embedding a video here, it’s kinda hard to explain but it’s a very satisfying way to go from wet to dry quickly.
And the Grid Linen towel has all of the other perks of the synthetic travel towel. It is far thinner than a cotton towel. It dries extremely quickly. It can be folded, rolled, or just crammed into a travel bag without weighing you down. And maybe best of all, the grid texture just sheds sand like nobody’s business making it the ultimate beach towel. The loops in the pile of a standard cotton towel can become saturated with sand and transport it back to your car or house very easily. Sand just comes off the linen towel with. a quick shake so you can leave all the sand at the beach and get on with your day.
Other minor things that make Outlier’s towel great are that they assemble them in New York with Lithuanian linen. No outsourcing in minimal carbon footprint for American consumers. They also attach a little loop at the end that is super handy to hanging or shaking to get the sand out. And if you buy one of the XL-sized towels, Outlier even throws in a really nifty velcro cinch enclosure to loop around the towel to keep it in a compact roll when traveling.
Conclusion
Let me be clear that you can get Linen towels from plenty of places that aren’t Outlier. A quick search on Etsy shows lots of great independent resellers that offer products that look almost identical at a more economical price. Outlier is not paying me to specifically recommend their towel. And linen can come from places other than Lithuania but it seems like Lithuanian linen is highly regarded and I’ve been pleased with the quality and longevity of my towels.
Yes, I say towels plural because I finally ditched all my cotton and polyester towels and only use linen towels these days. While the Outlier towels aren’t cheap, they are literally something that I use everyday. I’m very much in favor of upgrades (iterations?) to products you use everyday. Things like towels, socks, underwear, and toothbrushes come to mind as areas where I’m happy to spend a premium on a better experience since it’ll get used every single day.
So there you have it. You may think I’m crazy for such a detailed account of my journey to find a better bath towel, but I thought it was a great example to share. Sometimes technology solves our problems. Other times it’s best to look at what things have been working for hundreds or even thousands of years. Iterating a better bath towel didn’t take place in a high-tech lab but on a farm in Lithuania. Who could have guessed?
Anyone else ready to rethink their bath towels?
Thanks for reading, I’ll see you next week!
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