At first glance, the revelation that Timur Mindich, a close associate and former business partner of Volodymyr Zelensky, has a golden toilet sounds like the kind of silly season news you’d expect in August, not late autumn. Yet the story, and the lavatory in question, has rapidly become a symbol, to some, of political rot, rather than just rococo bathroom taste. Such is the peculiar power of the gold loo: no matter where it appears, it is never just plumbing. It is a status symbol, an act of theatre, and always a lightning rod for fascination.
It’s tempting to think of the golden toilet as a uniquely modern invention, the natural end point of an era in which everything – from kitchen cabinets to gym equipment – can be plated, polished and made more extravagant. But historically, gilded bathrooms have cropped up whenever immense wealth has collided with the desire to display it. Chinese emperors commissioned lavish, decorated privies; Indian maharajas were known to embellish their bathing rooms with precious metals; and Europe’s grand houses of the 17th and 18th centuries operated on the principle that if it didn’t move, it could be gilded. Today’s shiny loos, then, are simply the 21st-century chapter in an ancient story: human beings have always struggled to resist turning the most private corners of life into shrines to power.
The modern era’s most infamous example is undoubtedly the Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan’s 18-carat gold toilet, titled America, which became a global sensation when it was installed at Blenheim Palace in 2019. Fully functional and meticulously crafted, it was intended as satire – a gleaming commentary on American excess. Then, in the early hours of a September morning, thieves removed the entire thing, ripping up the palace’s plumbing in the process. The toilet has never been recovered, the gold thought to be melted down, though its new owners might have been inspired to do something with it when they saw the news this week that an identical version of the original America sold for $12.1m (£9.2m) at auction at Sotheby’s.
America’s fascination with gold bathrooms does not stop there. Donald Trump, whose love of shiny surfaces has been well documented, has never owned a solid-gold toilet, despite rumours to the contrary. His new bathroom at the White House reportedly features very luxurious gold-tone fittings but stops short of anything truly bullion-based. Yet the idea persists because it fits so neatly with the mythology: a gold loo is the sort of thing one imagines appearing somewhere between the gilded bannisters and Versace bedspreads. For many public figures, the gold toilet exists in the cultural imagination even when it doesn’t in real life.
Other golden loos, however, are very real indeed. Most famously – though hardest to prove – Kanye West and Kim Kardashian were widely reported to have purchased multiple gold loos for their former Bel Air mansion, at a cost which tabloids estimated hovered at around $750,000. Then there was the vintage gold loo designed especially for Frank Sinatra to use in his suite at the Wynn Hotel in Vegas. Its base was made of marble but its seat was in the shape of a shell, covered in gold leaf. It sold for $4,250 at auction in 2020.
In 2016, the rapper and Cash Money Records co-founder Birdman showed off his “million-dollar gold toilet” on Instagram, saying that the seat and lid were solid gold. And, the singer Kid Rock has an entirely golden bathroom, but told the podcast host Joe Rogan he had to cheat a little when it came to the toilet seat. “You have no idea how hard it was to find gold toilets,” he said in 2024. “I had to get the seat gold plated because I found a gold toilet, [but] I couldn’t find a seat and a lid. A guy had to cheaply gold plate it.”
Then there are the gold-trimmed bathrooms aboard oligarch yachts, uncovered in asset disclosures and investigative journalism over the last decade. The 140-metre Lürssen yacht Scheherazade is frequently cited as having gold-plated or gold-finished bathroom fixtures. They serve the same symbolic function: immense wealth expressed in the smallest and most private details.
But why does the gold loo exert such a hold on the imagination? Partly, it’s the sheer absurdity. A bathroom is, after all, the most democratic of spaces – everyone uses one. Gilding it feels like the ultimate act of extravagance, a statement not merely of wealth but of a certain philosophical position: that even the least glamorous rituals of daily life can be elevated to the level of opulent ceremony. In politics, the gold loo becomes shorthand for corruption or tone-deaf elitism. In the celebrity world, it signals the escalation of wealth into performance. In the art world, as Cattelan proved, it becomes satire, a gleaming mirror held up to society.
If you’re inspired to own your own, then The Remarkable Toilet Company sells gold toilets for £3,800, while Amazon has one for nearly £11,000. Because beyond the symbolism, there is something strangely timeless about it all. The attraction of gold – its permanence, its shine, its association with divinity – has endured for millennia. To place it in the bathroom is to collapse the sacred and the mundane into one object. Perhaps that is why these stories keep appearing. A gold toilet is ridiculous, yes, but it is also undeniably fascinating.