Are you looking for a cheaper alternative to Balenciaga’s Towel Skirt? Can't figure out how else to wrap a towel around your waist and call it fashion? IKEA has you covered.
The skirt, which arrived on Balenciaga’s website for $925, is finally available to pre-order after it was showcased during the luxury label's Spring 2024 presentation at Paris Fashion Week earlier this year.
Yup, that's right: for almost $1,000 you can get yourself a classic terry cotton towel with an adjustable belt, buttons, and a Balenciaga motif as added extras. Wear it after a shower, wear it over your giant jeans, wear it to the sauna, wear it anywhere, just pay something like 100 times the price of a normal towel.
Wrap yourself around that!
In the wake of the release and subsequent internet uproar — it's almost like a throwback to Balenciaga's controversial glory days — IKEA, everyone’s favorite affordable furniture company, has released its own “take” on Balenciaga's controversial Towel Skirt by way of the VINARN bath towel, an actual towel that bears a striking resemblance to Balenciaga’s “skirt” but is nearly $900 cheaper at a very fair $8
Though IKEA’s tongue-in-cheek imagery is tongue-in-cheek, it does also highlight just how ridiculous the Balenciaga Towel Skirt and its price is.
But then again, are we surprised? Over the last few years, Balenciaga has made a habit of releasing disruptive products that look ordinary and cost extraordinary, including a leather trash bag for $1,800 and pre-destroyed sneakers.
However, while the price of Balenciaga’s Towel Skirt isn't unheard of for what reads to normal people as a luxury novelty product, it does go against what Demna, the house’s mononymous creative director, said in an interview in the wake of last year’s ad scandal.
Demna, who has been at the helm of Balenciaga since 2015, said that he would practice “a more mature and serious approach” in designing future collections and not create products for “image or buzz.”
If there's anything that doesn't say mature and serious fashion, though, it’s selling a wrap-around towel as a skirt for nearly $1,000. Right? Or is it just me?
