Covet: 12 Arne Jacobsen Swan chairs, $44,400

Eight years ago, Lauren Genatossio was driving toward Providence to accept a marketing position when she impulsively turned her car around. She wound up at a Nordstrom makeup counter instead, where a chance encounter with a Laura Mercier executive led to a different job: makeup artist, starting Monday. Today Genatossio’s natural-looking work is everywhere—in national magazines, on celebrities like Laura Linney,  even on the TLC show Makeover Train. When designing Sarra, her new 1,800-square-foot South Boston makeup studio, Genatossio once again followed her intuition. “I spend so much time in my studio, I wanted it to feel like a home,” she says. So she sought out a dozen Arne Jacobsen swivel-base Swan chairs, “because they’re so damn cool and beautiful in their simplicity.” But at nearly $3,700 a pop, they’re also way beyond her budget. For now, she merely dreams of one day buying a custom-designed, aqua-colored Swan. “But only if I’ve had a really successful year.”