Fouta now a summer staple
This lovely striped swath of fabric is known as a fouta. Never heard of it? The fouta is what is generally referred to as a Turkish towel, as it’s been used in the traditional Turkish bath, or hammam, for centuries — even though it originally hails from Tunisia, where the fouta’s cotton is still woven to be extra-fine and magically absorbent, and it’s pretty fringes are still hand-tied by village women.
So essential has the fouta become to our summer lifestyle that when my husband accidentally allowed his (yes, we each have our own colour-coded model) to slip into a fast-moving river that we were sunning ourselves beside one rather windy afternoon and disappear into its depths, I had to run out and replace it the very next day.
For the uninitiated, it may be hard to understand how a simple rectangle of cloth can be such a gamechanger. But then, most of our linen closets are already stacked with towels, comforters and blankets in various weights and states of repair, and our closets overflow with scarves, shawls and beach sarongs — all, arguably, simple rectangles of cloth that at some point we just had to have.
Which does give rise to the perfectly reasonable question of why, then, would yet another random section of cloth, no matter how pretty its stripes, be required?
Just as with the craze for pashminas, the oversized cashmere shawls that proved to be so ultrafine, versatile and lightweight that they left all other toppers behind in the dust, the fouta is such a cut above that it rules, if not disrupts, its entire category.
And then the fouta is such a talented multi-tasker that it’s hard to nail down precisely what that category might be.
Incredibly absorbent and quickdrying, the fouta significantly outperforms your conventional fluffy Fieldcrest for both drying yourself after a swim and then lying on at the beach.
Lightweight, easy to pack and easy to wash, it makes a perfect hiker’s picnic blanket. Tightly woven and supersoft, it can do double duty as a pretty sarong or coverup, or provide an extra layer of warmth for a nap in the shade.
The fashionable are smitten by the fetching variety of patterns and colours that the fouta comes in — with foutas turning up on towel bars in beautifully appointed guest houses and being used as charmingly fringed tablecloths at some seriously stylish summer parties.
Best of all, while they used to be something you had to stock up on in the kiosks of Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar, foutas are now readily available online through stylish sites such as famillenomade.ca, or taste-forward local purveyors such as Putti Fine Furnishings (putti.ca).
If you haven’t yet experienced the genius of the fouta, I highly suggest giving it a try. So transformative is it, I can seriously no longer consider a summer without one. Karen von Hahn is a Toronto-based writer, trend observer and style commentator. Her new book, What Remains: Object Lessons in Love and Loss, is published by the House of Anansi Press. Contact her at kvh@karenvonhahn.com.