Bathing Beauty

SPOTLIGHT

inspired Marat's assassination, David and Bathsheba's assignation, and Seneca's suicide—and now the bath is the subject of Diane Von Furstenberg's latest book. As sleek as a soap bubble, The Bath (Random House) offers a tour of tubs from Malibu to Budapest, exposing the ablutionary habits of celebrities and civilizations along the way. (While Roman emperors found their baths the ideal setting for everything from orgies to orations, Louis XIV, Von Furstenberg informs us, immersed his royal derriere just twice in his life.)

A daily dunker, the author—shown here floating on the creek behind her Connecticut house—reviles the shower as

"fast, American, only for washing my hair." She regrets that her daughter, Tatiana, brought up mostly in this country, finds soaking in a static pool of water "disgusting." "I also would rather not look at the quality of the water," Von Furstenberg sympathizes, but her solution is to steep in scented foam, induced by one of the potions in her newly launched line of bath products. "For me a bath is private, purifying, rejuvenating, sacred, an oasis of peace—and one legitimate reason for locking yourself up in a room. My mother taught me that we all do the same routine things—work, eat, sleep, wash, have sex. What makes us different is how we do them."

AMY FINE COLLINS