Although in Eretz Yisroel this is unlikely to happen, in other places it is. What’s the halachah if one is by the Sea Side and he starts to get cold and wraps himself in a towel, does the towel need tzitzis?
R’ Zilberstein (Alon Beis Dovid, Shoftim 5737) was asked the above and he brought two rayas [proof] that the towel is exempt.
1) The Shulchan Aruch (10:10) rules
that a hat is exempt from tzitzis as its main purpose is to cover one’s head, and כסותך אמר רחמנא ולא כסות הראש – “the Torah requires a garment that one wears on his body in tzitzis, not a garment one wears on his head”. Similarly, a towel is designed to dry oneself and not to be a garment, therefore, if one uses it as such it is still exempt.
2) The Rema (10:12) describes a certain type of garment
that they would wear in certain places, and he writes, that since it is not designed to be worn, with two corners at the front and two at the back, it is exempt from tzitzis. Similarly, a towel isn’t designed to be worn with two corners at the front and two at the back, and therefore, will also be exempt from tzitzis.
(A large amount of the above is based on a Teshuva written by R’ Yom Tov Sanger, which I saw in his Madanay Yom Tov)
