Why your bath robe doesn’t work at the pool

Why your bath robe doesn’t work at the pool

The robes I owned were bath robes, thick and plush and made for standing in your bathroom after a shower. Taking one of those to the pool never even crossed my mind. It would’ve soaked up half the pool and taken all day to dry.

So instead I did what most moms do. Threw a towel around my shoulders, held it closed with one hand, and used the other hand to chase down a toddler who needed to be stopped before he ate a rock. Not exactly a system.

Then I saw another mom at the pool wearing a short terry robe. Simple, absorbent, hit right above the knee, looked like she’d thrown it on without thinking twice. I asked her about it and she told me the price.

$110.

For a robe. A short one. Barely any fabric. Not a chance was I paying that.

I went home and looked it up myself and was shocked again at the price. Once I started searching, I realized this wasn’t a one-off, it was a whole category of robes priced like that, all clearly banking on the fact that if you want a good one, you don’t have a lot of other options.

I looked for a dupe for weeks. Genuinely weeks. Every “affordable towel robe” search led to either the same $100+ robes or ones just so ugly you’d never want to be seen in them. Nothing in between. Nothing that felt like it was actually made for a mom who’s in and out of the pool, not a spa day.

At some point the dupe hunt just turned into “fine, I’ll make it myself.” Which sounds a lot more decisive than it felt at the time. Mostly it was me getting increasingly annoyed that something this simple didn’t exist at a normal price, and deciding I was tired of waiting for someone else to make it.

That robe is Sunna now. 100% cotton terry, short, absorbent, dries fast, made for the version of your day where you’re wet and cold and need to be somewhere in ten minutes. Not for lounging on the couch. For throwing on after the pool, the beach, the sweat sesh, and actually going and doing your day in it.

I didn’t set out to start a robe company. I set out to stop overpaying for something that should’ve been easy to find. Turns out that’s basically the same thing.

If you’ve been doing the towel-and-one-free-hand thing too, I made this for you.