There's one category in design that many would rather ignore: the toilet. Functional and unglamorous, this basest of interior objects often remains an afterthought. A ‘high-end’ market exists, but it’s cornered by the Japanese smart toilet: sleek and spaceship-like. If you want sculpture, not software, options are conspicuously limited.
Enter Trone – the brainchild of Hugo Volpei, who launched the French bathroom brand in 2018 on the premise that the humble toilet deserves its moment in the sun. The idea was born during a visit to what may be the world’s most Instagrammed toilets: the two-metre-high egg-shaped pods at London’s Sketch, which have become something of a cultural phenomenon. And yet, inside those eggs? The same white, clinical, forgettable toilet found almost anywhere. What if the fixture itself became the star, Volpei wondered?
The 'Icone' toilet and 'Orbe' basin
A graduate of HEC, France's leading business school, Volpei displayed an early flair for design, reselling customised T-shirts as a child and aspiring to become an architect in his teens. Trone was an offshoot of his final-year thesis, launched with zero industry contacts – just a Google search for ‘toilet manufacturing process’. It was scrappy from day one, with a childhood friend modelling the first prototype.
Then came the company's breakout – a deal with Big Mamma, the restaurant group behind some of Europe's biggest hospitality venues, and a brutal deadline of seven toilets in six months. Volpei brought in an engineer to turn sketches into reality, and the client list has only grown more glamorous since, with names including LVMH, Marriott International and The Berkeley.
The 'Callipyge' toilet
The 'Altesse' toilet
The Trone catalogue now spans toilets, basins, flush plates, taps and accessories – sleek one moment, playful the next, in palettes that swing from bold to powder-soft. They come in forms that take a second to register for what they actually are: stepped bowls, asymmetric lids, transparent cisterns. Three hero toilet designs – ‘Callipyge’, ‘Icone’ and the newest arrival, ‘Altesse’ – showcase amorphous curves, glazed coloured ceramic and terrazzo-flecked finishes.
‘Altesse’, unveiled at Milan Design Week 2026, is Trone's answer to the Japanese smart toilet: with the lid closed, it barely registers as a toilet at all, appearing instead as a smooth, wall-mounted pod. Gone is the notorious over-engineering that’s left more than one unsuspecting user in a slapstick standoff with rogue water jets. In its place: a remote tucked behind a discreet ceramic panel.
The basins are equally sculptural, with designs ranging from the doughnut-shaped ‘Orbe’ to ‘Ritual’, where water vanishes into a funnel-shaped vortex, as if being sucked into a black hole.
‘In France and Europe, people generally don't talk about [the toilet],’ observes Volpei. ‘And when they do, they laugh about it. Making this moment “cool” is a huge ambition. Creating desire around an object that's never been desirable – that's the real challenge.’
It’s this irreverence, as much as the genuinely beautiful toilet designs, that gives Trone its appeal. Volpei has built the brand with his tongue firmly in his cheek: Trone means ‘throne’, ‘Altesse’ means ‘highness’, and ‘Callipyge’ is an adjective that means having well-shaped or beautiful buttocks. Because you can’t build a bathroom brand without embracing a little toilet humour.