Beachy Keen

By Nancy McKeon

IT’S ALMOST the Fourth of July, time to retire that ratty, faded old beach towel. Your visits to the pool at the club, or your patch of sand by the ocean, deserve better. Here are a handful of pool/beach towels that caught our eye, ranging in price from the sublime to the ridiculous (okay, it’s Prada, but Balenciaga and Hermès aren’t far behind).

From Frances Valentine, an eye-popping Colorblock towel in cotton is $128. It measures 30×60 inches.

Johnny Was is boho central, and that extends to beach towels. The reversible Rainbow Phoenix is 70×40 inches, made of polyester, and $78. There’s also a matching beach blanket, 65×70 inches, for $88.

For the poolside modernist comes the Lake Shore organic cotton towel, 35×70 inches, $39.95 at CB2.

Baby shark, doo-doo-da-doo-doo-doo . . . you know the rest. For the oceanside “Jaws” crowd, the XL Shark towel, left, in cotton, from Sun Squad, 36×72 inches, for $15. There’s also a Sun Squad towel (not shown) with bigger, bolder, toothier sharks for $10. Then, for the little ones, there’s Sun Squad’s hooded shark towel, 24×24 inches, in cotton velour, $15. All at Target.

Moda at Home offers this cotton Tropical Leaves towel, 35×70 inches, $14.97 at Nordstrom. Moda at Home has other tropical-looking towels in other colorways as well.

Leave it to Hermès to make a $590 cotton towel. This very fishy Traffic Jam towel, 35×59 inches, comes in two other colorways, a yellow/chestmut combo and pink/navy. (If you’re really in a mood to spend, you can score a black-on-yellow Prada towel that rolls up with a nylon strap carrier, for $1,270, at Prada.com.)

Bold graphics distinguish the cotton pool towels from Jonathan Adler. Here are Tiger, Snake, Arcade and Muse, each $120. They’re 40×70 inches with a printed velour face and solid-color terry on the back.

A final burst of color comes compliments of, from left, West Elm, with Modern Art Botanical in coral, 40×70 inches, $34.50. It’s cotton and also comes in a lagoon-blue colorway; the Meridian cotton towel from Anthropologie, 40×70 inches, $46.40; and Balenciaga’s cotton logo towel, $495. In addition to pink, it also comes in navy and orange.

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