The Bathroom Is the Place for Drama and Luxury
Though it might seem counterintuitive, the bathroom is one of the few places mystique can be found! They’re very transportive places, perhaps because they’re usually either windowless or with those frosted windows, and if you’ve been stuck at home for months, it’s one of the few places you can go to escape. You can take a bath, look at your phone on the toilet until your legs fall asleep, or simply stare at yourself in the mirror for a while, examining whether your skin looks nice or what your eyes are telling you.
Because of this, your bathroom probably needs MORE glamour! (What couldn’t use more glamour? Also, we usually forget to make bathrooms glamorous.) It’s a shame that carpet is no longer a popular choice for bathrooms; maybe it’s like carpet in restaurants—dirty to think about, but it certainly improves the atmosphere.
The International Association of Certified Home Inspectors lists the advantages of carpet as a way to “make bathrooms appear warm and inviting,” easier on bare feet, and a way to reduce slip hazards. All six cons start with “water” followed by a verb like “splashes” or “drips.” A 2012 blog post from Retro Renovation talks about the history of wall-to-wall carpeting, which began just after World War II.
From Retro Renovation:
“The post-World War II era saw a surge in carpet sales that was primarily due to increased interest in home décor and new carpet fiber technologies,” said Morrow. “Carpet had been a luxury during the war – as many home goods had been – and once the war was over, there were plenty of stay-at-home moms that were ready to decorate their homes with products they couldn’t get during the war years. At the same time, there were technological advances taking place in the carpet industry – tufted nylon provided a similar look as the woven wool carpets and rugs from the pre-war years; however, nylon was more durable and much more attainable to the growing middle class. This combination of factors was really the perfect storm that led carpet to grow exponentially in the 1950s.”
If you simply must keep carpet out of your bathroom, there are still ways to access the upper echelons of la buena vida via a tub, vanity lighting, and a cellular phone to catch up with your friends. It’s important to spend time in bathrooms with friends because few experiences in life thread together our Various Selves like Trips To The Bathroom With The Girls, age five to now. In Austin, Texas, there is a country bar that even has a whole train car in the women’s restroom, a two-story affair with private cubbyhole seating.
“Yet it’s only recently in domestic history that bathrooms (and kitchens) were just a functional space to be hidden from visitors,” a fancy faucet pamphlet titled Luxure: Fittings For a King writes. The fact is – when it comes to interiors where water is delivered for humankind’s ease and pleasure – these places have always been special.”
A 1902 edition of Webster’s used two different definitions for the word “glamour.” One was “a kind of haze in the air, causing things to appear different from what they really are” and the second was “any artificial interest in, or association with, an object, through which is appears delusively magnified or glorified.” Consider these two definitions a blueprint for bathroom action!
Bathrooms can be all-too-real vessels of reality, from face to bowels to toes, and for that, they deserve to be delusively glorified. Hollywood—Cecil B. DeMille, in particular—created the idea of the bathroom as a story-furthering device. It was Joan Crawford in The Women, sneering “Romance?” into the phone as she soaked in a crystal tub fitted with a satin headboard. It was Marilyn Monroe’s eyes widening, remembering her neighbor, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, as the plumber (in the non-censored version) dropped his wrench into a small mountain of bubbles.
In his 1974 book Sex in Films, Parker Tyler talks about the drama of bathroom movie scenes, a creator of indirect innuendo. “A bathtub is a place where one presumably gets ‘clean,’ not ‘obscene,’ while in turn it becomes an ideal hazard for anticlimaxes. What starts as an innocent desire for personal cleanliness can slip automatically into an (equally) innocent desire for personal something else.”
In the spirit of that personal something else and creating a haze in the air to cause things to appear different from what they really are, please see below!
Columns:
1. Pedestal Column Plant Stand, 4-Pack—Tablecloths Factory—$101.29
2. Ancient Greece Octagon Column (Ed’s note: This column is surprisingly tall)—Shindigz—$50.99
3. Set of 2 Greek Columns, Ionic & Corinthian Style—Greek Art Shop—$46.80
Towels/Towel Rings:
1. Gold Lioness Safari Chic Hand Towel—Christyne—$11.99 (featured in our header image!)
2. Vintage Lion Towel Holder—Vintage Art Supplies—$36.00 (featured in our header image!)
3. Emerald Marble Glamour Landscapes Towel—UtArt—$27.99
Phones:
1. Original Motorola Razr—eBay—$27.99
2. Vintage Hot Lips Pink Phone—Edgar De Costa—$52.94
3. 1980s Freedom Dialer—Joe’s Video Spot—$25.00
Plants:
1. Spider Plant—Planting With P—$23.00
2. Philodendron Plant—Natty Garden—$9.99
3. Rhapidophora Decursiva (Ed’s Note: This tropical plant shop is COOL!) —Tennessee Tropicals—$75.00
Candles:
1. Monogram Candle–Shrine—$38.00 (featured in our header image!)
2. “Savoy” Luxury Candle—Harlem Candle Co.—$45.00
3. Madonna Votive Candle—Bijou Candles—$39.00
Accessories:
1. Seafoam Ceramic Ashtray–Abigail Bell Vintage–$35.00 (A sold-out item from Abigail Bell Vintage is featured in our above image, so we found a replacement!)
2. Yin Yang Candle—Wildfang Home—$36.00
3. Vintage Iridescent Ceramic Shell Dish—Valley Pop Dish—$30.00
