Okay, we need to talk about towels.
I'm going to try to make this about the towels and not about my whole personality. No promises.
So a few months ago I replaced every single towel in my apartment. Every one. Including the ones I'd lugged through three moves and pretended I still liked. And I am going to tell you about it, because the difference is genuinely a little ridiculous and I keep mentioning it to friends and they keep being like "wait, send me the link."
The link is this one. Italic's Ultraplush. 100% Australian cotton, 800 GSM (more on that in a second, I'll explain), comes in six colors, sets start at $29 if you just want washcloths and go up from there.
But "I like my towels now" is not a sentence I expected to say with any conviction, so let me actually walk through why. Five things. In the order I noticed them.
The damp-towel problem just… stopped happening.
You know how a normal towel is sort of damp from this morning when you go to use it tonight? And then it does that thing where it kind of smells like a towel? That's a thing for everyone, right, that's not just me.
It doesn't happen with these. I noticed maybe a week in. I'd hang the bath sheet up after my shower, walk past it later, and it was just… dry. Like a normal piece of fabric is dry. It releases water as fast as it picks it up. Which apparently is what towels are supposed to do, and I had just been living with a lower standard for like a decade.
They are soft enough to use on my face.
I have sensitive skin. I cannot overstate how much my old hand towels were sandpaper to me. I'd basically been doing my whole evening skincare routine with a single dedicated soft cloth I rotated like it was Hermès because every other towel in my house was a hazard.
The Ultraplush washcloths are genuinely so soft I use them for cleanser nights. They're not "fine, I guess." They're better than my dedicated face cloth was. The reviews back me up on this one — I went and looked because I was like, surely I'm not the only person who clocked this:
Validating, Amanda. Thank you.
About the weight thing.
Okay so this is the one I have to explain. I had vaguely heard "GSM" thrown around when people talk about towels and assumed it was marketing nonsense. It's not, it's just… a number.
GSM = grams per square meter. It's basically how much actual cotton is in a given square of the towel. A nice hotel bath towel is usually 600 to 700 GSM. A cheap one from Target is 300-500. These are 800.
Which I thought would translate to "feels heavier when you pick it up" and not much else. It does not translate to that. It translates to: you get out of the shower and you feel like you're at a spa. Like the towel hugs you. I sound insane. I am not insane. The weight is the whole point — it's why your bathroom suddenly feels like a nicer bathroom even though you didn't change anything else.
My boyfriend, who notices nothing, picked one up the day they arrived and said "oh, these are nice ones." That was the moment.
They have not gotten worse.
This is the part I genuinely could not have written when I first got them, because the real test of any towel is what it's like in six months. I've had them since the spring. I wash them constantly. They have not pilled, they have not thinned, they have not gone scratchy.
This is genuinely the move with towels. Most of the cheap ones are amazing for two weeks and then they get that weird. You know the weird. Crunchy when they're dry, slimy when they're damp, never quite the same after that one time you accidentally washed them with a new black t-shirt. These just… stay good.
I think it's because the cotton is long-staple — the fibers are physically longer, so they don't shed or fray the way short-staple cotton does. Same reason good hotel sheets feel good for ten years instead of three months.
The actual reason, which is annoying to admit.
Okay, this is the real one and I'm a little embarrassed by it.
Replacing my towels did something to my mornings that I cannot get back. My bathroom is the same bathroom. The lighting is the same lighting. My espresso machine is doing its same loud thing. But the thirty seconds after the shower — wrapping up in something heavy and soft instead of grabbing something that's basically a thin sheet of fabric — turned my morning into a Moment.
Which is so dumb to say out loud, but it's also the thing. The towels are such a small change. And yet I am slower in the morning now. I drink the coffee at the counter instead of on the way out. I am, in some genuine sense, a more relaxed person who lives in a slightly nicer house because I spent $99 on a two-pack of bath towels.
They didn't sell me towels. They sold me five extra minutes of being a person who lives a nice life. I'm going to be honest, the math on that is incredible.
Yes okay shop the towels From $29 →Other people, six months in.
The bath sheets are like bath blankets
On my third set in a different color
They've stayed soft after months
A few questions I got from friends
Which color did I get? Mist. Then I ordered Sand for the guest bath because I have no self-control. I think White is the most foolproof if you can't decide.
Which size do I actually need? Bath towel for showers, bath sheet if you have any preference for being completely wrapped up. I got bath sheets. I will never go back. The bath sheet is the move.
Do they shed lint? The first wash, yes a little — Italic actually says to wash before first use which I respect, that's the honest move. After that, nothing.
What does the return policy look like? 30 days, no restocking fee. I checked because I am a chronic returner and I never had to use it.
