The word “dressing table” is intertwined with my memories of everyday life as someone born in Showa-era Japan. I glimpsed my mother’s dressing table over her shoulder when she sat down at it after finishing the day’s housework; when we went to visit my aunt over the summer holidays, there was a dressing table was in the bedroom where I woke up each morning to the combined scent of the sea breeze and the makeup my aunt sold at her cosmetics counter. In junior high school, when I visited the United States for the first time, I was astonished by the sheer size of my host mother’s dressing table. She paused in front of it during my tour of the house to offer a detailed explanation. My facility with the language was still limited then, but in retrospect I imagine she was proud to have such a splendid place to put on her face before heading out to work. At a home school homestay in Australia, my precocious host sister—despite being the same age as me—had a dressing table in her room where she would sit and tirelessly strive to replicate the looks in the cut-out pictures of stars that ringed the mirror. Later, I moved to Sweden, where dressing tables are less common and mirrors are placed not just functionally over washbasins but also in living rooms and halls, often combined with interior design elements like vases or candlesticks. Northern Europe’s dramatic differences in day and night length have given rise to a common wisdom of interior design in which dazzling sunlight and the dim flicker of candles are both diligently captured and guided to the corners that need them most.
Pondering the origins of dressing table, and the process by which it became a standard piece of household furniture, helps elucidate the relationship between the natural light humans crave and the materials that reflect it. It is fascinating to see how this has affected our everyday lives.
A mirror is an object that reflects images. Today’s mass-produced float mirrors were not perfected and made available to everyday citizens until the early twentieth century. People were making mirrors for thousands of years before this, using materials such as stone, metal, and glass, but these mirrors had strictly limited application as Buddhist artifacts, religious offerings, and items used by nobles at their toilet. By contrast, the oldest mirror of all, is completely natural and available for everyone to use. Perhaps it was seeing our own images amid the landscapes and moonlight reflected on the face of the water that helped humanity realize, on an emotional level, that we coexist with nature. To understand your existence in conjunction with the scenery is to grasp the relationship between your external appearance and inner world and realize the effect it has on others. That realization was itself self-care and surely stirred up great interest in humanity at large.
On a still day, calm waters mean clear reflections in these natural mirrors. But water is constantly in motion, and our hearts and appearances are fluid, too. The invention of the mirror could be attributed to a desire to preserve those moments for the sake of self-care. This, in turn, raises the important question of where and how to place mirrors to create spaces for spending those moments. No doubt humans originally gathered around the water itself, but the desire to keep mirrors close at hand inspired the invention of water-filled vessels and polished metal and stone. There can be no reflection without light, so most mirrors were small and portable enough to be taken where the light was. As modernity progressed, mirrors improved in quality, and electrification resulted in artificial light that was readily available and stabler than its natural counterpart. Mirrors came to adopt fixed locations as a result. During the same period, inventions like the washing machine and the rice cooker revolutionized housework, slashing the time and effort required and relieving some of the pressure on women’s daily schedules. This, in turn, gave women time to sit at their dressing table, creating a new moment devoted to self-care. The boom in popularity of the dressing table in everyday houses, I believe, was inspired by the way it symbolizes individualization within modern society. The dressing table continues to evolve today, and remains one of the few pieces of furniture strongly associated with gender: with the exception of actors and the like, only women use dressing tables. This was the context in which, in 1985, architect Toyo Ito, in collaboration with Kazuyo Sejima, who was then one of his staff members, unveiled their Pao for the Tokyo Nomad Girl project. Single women living in Tokyo used restaurants as dining rooms, boutiques as wardrobes, laundromats as washing machines—in short, they made the urban space as a whole their residence. Ito and Sejima’s project deconstructs the concept of the house, proposing in its place a fragmented space designed for women who live like urban nomads, and even in this context the dressing table is present as “furniture for dressing up.” Though still coded female, the dressing table has casually been released into the streets.
As homes grow smaller, furniture grows lighter, and we turn increasingly to phone cameras instead of mirrors, the dressing table has come to feel rather old-fashioned. Nevertheless, when designed with an understanding of natural light and its ability to draw out the innate power of mirrors, dressing tables retain their functional and essential beauty even today. I do not own a dressing table myself; the compact I have used for some 35 years is still sufficient for my needs. Whichever country I find myself residing or traveling in, I sit by the window on sunny days, or under the light fixture on gloomy ones, to adjust my eyebrows. Andrée Putman’s dressing tables are masterpieces that reflect this simplicity without bending to the whims of fashion.
The place where we sit at our dressing table is also our vantage point for regarding—albeit indirectly—ourselves and our world. A mirror reflects both reality and our state of mind. The human fascination with mirrors is evident from their depiction as psychological apparatus in countless stories, from Oscar Wilde’s 1890 novel The Picture of Dorian Gray to the German folk tale of Snow White published by the Grimm Brothers in 1812. My favourite description of a mirror, however, can be found in Natsume Soseki’s novel I Am a Cat, serialized from 1905 to 1906, in which the titular cat remarks (in Aiko Ito and Graeme Wilson’s translation): “A mirror is a vat for brewing self-conceit, yet, at the same time, a means to neutralize all vanity. Nothing shows up the absurd pretensions of a show-off more incitingly than a mirror.” Even as our way of life evolves with the times, mirrors will always remain unchanged in essence from those original, natural mirrors that reflected our relationship with the world back to us. No matter how busy we get, we must make time to sit down before the mirror.

(Translation Matt Treyvaud)

Captions:

Isoda Koryusai (1735–1790), “Woman grooming her eyebrows”
Isoda Koryusai was an ukiyo-e artist of the mid–Edo period. This print, currently in the collection of the Musée Guimet in Paris, depicts one of the dressing tables that were in fashion at the time.

Two dressing tables by Pierre Chareau (1883–1950)
Dressing tables crafted by Pierre Chareau, a furniture designer known for his work on the renowned Maison de Verre or “Glass House” in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Paris.

Dressing table by Émile-Jacques Ruhlmann (1879-1933)
A French furniture designer who epitomized Art Deco. His luxurious dressing tables were highly regarded by the wealthy elite of the time.

Dressing table by Hendrick Wouda (1885–1946)
This dressing table was designed as part of a set entitled “Bedroom for a Young Girl.” Its exquisite silhouette captivated visitors when it was displayed at a furniture store in Amsterdam in 1924.

Dressing table by Andrée Putman (1925–2013) (chair: Pierre Staudenmeyer, print: Andrea Branzi )
Andrée Putman was a French interior designer whose eye-catching work for hotels and museums combined a unique edginess and elegance. This dressing table has a minimal design, becoming a desk if the mirror is closed. Even among Putman’s oeuvre, it has a particularly special presence to it.

Toyo Ito (1941–), “Pao for the Tokyo Nomad Girl” (1985)
Photograph: Tomio Ohashi
An architectural space designed for the young women who lived like urban nomads during Bubble-era Tokyo. Even with family restaurants and 24-hour convenience stores part of their lives, dressing tables could still be found in these one-woman dens.

Contemporary Dressing Table
This portable dressing table devised by LICHT gallery can be moved to where the light is even in cramped spaces. The mirror can be detached and stowed when necessary, and it combines usability with beauty in a way suited to contemporary lifestyles.

Ikko Yokoyama is the Lead Curator of Design and Architecture at M+, a museum in Hong Kong, as well as a writer. Specialising in design, architecture, and crafts, she was based in Sweden for 21 years. She is an executive committee member of the International Con-federation of Architectural Museums (ICAM) and an expert member of the Council for Cultural Affairs under the Agency of Cultural Affairs, Government of Japan.