Vitamin A and its metabolite retinoic acid influence various aspects of immunity. Although the capacity of vitamin A to condition intestinal CD103⁺ DCs to imprint tissue‐specific homing programs onto activated lymphocytes is well documented, it is unclear whether vitamin A also regulates DC populations in other tissues. A study published in this issue of the European Journal of Immunology, Beijer et al. [Eur. J. Immunol. 2013. 43: 1608–1616] now demonstrates that vitamin A exerts profound effects on the subset composition of splenic DCs. By resolving that splenic ESAM^hi CD11b^hi DCs are preferentially responsive to regulation by vitamin A, these novel insights not only further support the notion that ESAM expression marks two distinct lineages of splenic CD11b^hi DCs, but also provide an important extension to our understanding of how vitamin A influences the immune system.