The Prettiest Vanity Setup

A vanity is the smallest room in the house that is entirely your own. Ours sits in the corner where the morning light comes through the sheers — a crisp white eleven-drawer desk with a Hollywood-lit mirror, and everything on top of it chosen because it is beautiful rather than because it is useful. A blush Rosy Check bear keeps watch from the shelf. A crystal swivel mirror stands on its mirrored base like a piece of jewelry. There are hydrangeas in a glass bubble vase, tulips in the corner, and a candle in a cut-crystal jar that gets lit before anything else in the morning. The trick to a vanity that photographs as beautifully as it functions is to give every category a pretty vessel: a scalloped blue chinoiserie mat under the whole composition, a pink floral tray for the rings and the perfume, a Rosy Check butterfly dish for the earrings that come off at midnight, an acrylic organizer for the serums so the bottles line up like a little shop. Then add one gold thing — pavé huggies, a twisted Cape Cod bangle — and leave it out, because the jewelry you can see is the jewelry you actually wear. It takes ten minutes to set and it makes every ordinary morning feel like an occasion.