The Beauty Spot More Than a Piece of Furniture, the Vanity Makes You Feel Pampered
IN HER chintz-and-mahogany bedroom, actress Jaclyn Smith has a lighted Victorian dressing table on which she keeps her antique perfume bottles and sterling mirror and brush set. Elizabeth Taylor’s bedroom includes a white-carpeted dressing room, where her oak-and-marble makeup table, complete with antique sink, takes center stage.
A piece of furniture designed to hold makeup may seem like a Hollywood anachronism in a megalopolitan L.A. on the verge of the ‘90s, but more and more women who aren’t screen stars are finding that it makes life in the big city just a bit more tolerable. They focus on the luxurious and self-indulgent aspects of having a private place to preen, away from the steamy bathroom.
Consider Daina Hulet, West Coast editor of Glamour, who says a 19th-Century walnut vanity with hand-carved details is her “most important piece of furniture.” She splurged on the $3,000 English dressing table at Mitchell Litt Antiques in Sherman Oaks when, she says, she couldn’t afford it. “But what it does for me emotionally is worth the price. I sit down in front of it and feel like a little girl dressing up--it’s my escape.”
Artist Annie Kelly says the romance of a dressing table is important to her, too. “I keep beautiful perfume bottles and my jewelry collection on mine,” explains Kelly, who fashioned her hand-painted vanity, recently exhibited at The Functional Art gallery in Santa Monica, from two sets of drawers bought at a hardware store.
But dressing tables add more than just a little romance to everyday life. They do have some practical advantages. Hulet also keeps fashion accessories in her 12-drawer vanity. And cosmetics manufacturer Gale Hayman stores a different type of makeup in each drawer of hers. But most devotees acknowledge that the makeup mirror is a vanity’s most important feature.
Standing in front of her own custom black-lacquer vanity with its huge mirror, Hayman says: “You’ve got to be able to see yourself full length. Makeup is part of a woman’s total look, so you can’t just look at your face in a little mirror.” She uses her signature leopard-pattern hand mirrors to apply her cosmetics, but then gets the overall view in her side-lit vanity mirror.
Many women keep a magnifying mirror on the vanity to apply their makeup. Gary Cockrell, cosmetics buyer for I. Magnin and Bullocks Wilshire, says that at least five customers have purchased $3,700 table-top magnifying mirrors. Prices for other styles range from $100 up, depending on the size of the optical-quality glass, Cockrell says. “The demand has just been in the last year--suddenly, it seems that everyone wants a luxurious mirror for her makeup table.”
Soon 18-year-old Laura Fleming will sit down at a Lucite dressing table to apply her makeup and brush her long brown hair. The Cal State Northridge student didn’t see the need for it, but her mother insisted that the design of their new home include a customized space for Laura to primp. “She thinks I’m crazy and that she’ll never use it,” says Bonnie Fleming. “But this is one of those cases where mother knows best. I always wanted one when I was a girl.”
