“Why Don’t Towels Stretch?” Herschel Co-Founder’s New Home Goods Brand Rethinks the Towel

The idea started taking shape just over a year ago, says Herschel co-founder Lyndon Cormack. “It’s quite shocking to me that the majority of people don’t have a favourite towel brand,” he says. “It’s something so personal—it gets used every day and it’s also a décor item if people have them on display.” And yet, he notes, there aren’t any brands that have really percolated to the top of the market. “So what if we could make a cooler towel?”

The “we” in that question is friends (and now colleagues) Pheobe Glasfurd and Aren Fieldwalker of Glasfurd and Walker. With Cormack’s background in co-creating the global design giant Herschel, and Glasfurd and Fieldwalker’s wild success in being the leading-edge of branding Vancouver’s hospitality industry (you’ll spot their influence on restaurants like Selene, Kissa Tanto and Ask for Luigi), they knew they could make something new that looked great: great identity, cool branding and excellent colourways. They wanted to create something more than that. “We started brainstorming—is there something we could do that would actually [give] people a reason to care?”

The fact that all three Vancouverites live in the origin city of athleisure might have something to do with where they landed. “We thought, why don’t towels stretch?” says Cormack. “The pants I’m wearing right now, for example, have stretch in them—and doesn’t everything else?”

The trio started playing around with adding spandex to a typical cotton terry towel and included hospitality testing for washability over time, as well as third-party testing. “We’ve gone through the wringer on making sure what we’re actually delivering is world class from the get-go,” he says. While athleisure wear can have up to 16 percent spandex, a cotton towel has the ideal stretch (about 30 percent) with just two percent added spandex. And so The Typical Stretch Towel was born.

Cormack soft-launched the line at New York’s Shoppe Object back in August with his 19-year-old daughter, Isla—and is headed back to the same show with younger daughter Olive. “They were just two and three when I started Herschel so they don’t remember those early days,” says Cormack. “They’re both studying business in California—so it’s a happy accident of timing that they really be a part of something from the beginning.”

The brand officially launches with its first towel collection on February 1 both online and at retail partners across North America, with new colourways arriving seasonally and more home goods products to come—likely with their own twist to them. “If we were just making beautiful towels with different patterns and designs, I don’t think we’d be doing it,” he says. “I think we’ve discovered something that actually changes towels. I think in 10 years, 30 percent of towels in the market will have stretch to them.”

Typical.net