Though public restrooms largely disappeared from American cities in the 1970s because of municipal budget cuts and protests against coin-operated stalls, they’ve lately re-entered the conversation. Partly this is because they’ve once again become a political battleground, with laws limiting access for transgender people. (For years, police also frequented them to arrest gay men looking for sex.) And partly it’s because they’re an apt setting for art exploring identity, the body and discretion. Here, four ways the bathroom is showing up in the culture now.
Valentino’s Fall 2025 Runway Show
The creative director Alessandro Michele presented his latest collection in a set that included red toilet stalls, where models changed in and out of gender-fluid looks that incorporated lingerie and bathrobes. “A public toilet,” Michele wrote in his show notes, “neutralizes and suspends the dualism between … what remains private and what is meant to be shared.”
Contemporary Art
This past spring, for his exhibition at the TriBeCa gallery Anat Ebgi, the London-based Polish artist Krzysztof Strzelecki installed a series of tiled basins on both sides of a chain-link fence in a nod to the urinal dividers at the Eagle NYC, a roughly 50-year-old gay club in Chelsea. And last year, for his show at the Los Angeles outpost of Lisson Gallery, the New York-based sculptor Hugh Hayden surrounded each of his works — one of which was a bristle-covered toilet — with a metal bathroom stall (above).
Wim Wenders’s ‘Perfect Days’
The German director’s 2023 film introduced many people to the splendor of Tokyo’s public facilities. Depicting the daily life of a toilet cleaner, the movie includes examples like a deep crimson structure by the architect Nao Tamura (above) that’s meant to resemble traditional origata gift wrapping, and the architect Shigeru Ban’s pavilion of small rooms with orange-, pink- and purple-tinted glass walls that turn opaque when the chambers are occupied.
New York City’s Bathroom Initiative
In April, the City Council announced a plan to nearly double the number of public facilities by 2035. The expansion is expected to be particularly helpful to those experiencing homelessness, as well as to the city’s approximately 80,000 delivery workers.
Jameson Montgomery is a fashion assistant at T Magazine.
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