Mon, Aug 27, 2001 page24

• Spas steaming up Manhattan's socialites

  SMALL LUXURIES Despite the economic downturn, beauty spas are proliferating in the center of New York City, purporting to offer a much-needed break

  • NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE
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  A rash of new day spas has erupted in New York recently, each promising new attractions to catch the eye of jaded beauty consumers.

  In the last year alone there have been Ajune, a spa opened by a plastic surgeon, and Skin Care Lab, opened by dermatologists. Cleo II, a chain of nail salons, is expanding into spas that offer late-night services. The Greenhouse spa offers Indian-inspired treatments like chickpea powder foot exfoliation. The Stone spa specializes in hot stone massage. Even the 92nd Street Y opened a spa featuring beauty treatments early this summer. And there's no end in sight. Maximus, an ultra-design 6,000-square-foot hair salon and spa in SoHo, opened about two weeks ago. The Brigitte Mansfield European Spa, in Union Square, began dispensing caviar-laced treatments last April. There is the Eden Day Spa, in TriBeCa, which opened in June, and in a few weeks, John Masters, a hairdresser who specializes in organic beauty treatments, will offer spa services at his new salon, also in SoHo.

  

  Janine Faruol relaxes in the hydrotherapy tub at Maximus in Manhattan. Of the nearly 5,700 spas in the US, more than 75 percent are day spas.

  PHOTO: NY TIMES

  Until 1996, when Marcia Kilgore opened Bliss, on Broadway near Prince Street, most of the so-called day spas were uptown, in semi-dotty places like Elizabeth Arden, where they generally excelled at providing decent service in an atmosphere of hushed Hungarian-magic-creme mystery. Who knew what those hair-netted European ladies were dabbing on your face? Just the notion of having a facial seemed exotic.

  Of the nearly 5,700 spas in the US, including well-known resort spas like Golden Door and Canyon Ranch, more than 75 percent are day spas, according to the International Spa Association. Since 1994, the number of new day spas across the country has increased 127 percent, making it one of the fastest growing segments of the spa industry, which had revenue last year of $5 billion.

  Even in stressed-out New York, is there enough demand to keep all the loofah scrubbers happy?

  Naturally, the owners of the newest day spas think there is. "What Bliss did for the entire industry is put the word `day spa' on everybody's Rolodex," said Calcasola, who also owns spa-salons in Merrick and Westbury, on Long Island. "There is demand if you are professional and you don't treat spa as an ancillary service. It is a business. You can't just jump on the bandwagon and suddenly become Mary Jane's Beauty Box and Spa."

  Amy Astley, the beauty director of Vogue, thinks there's plenty of demand, and points to the continued popularity of Bliss, where a Saturday appointment for a facial is a two-to-three-month wait. ( Kilgore plans to open a London spa in early November and expects to open three or four spas around this country in the next few years, as well as 150 QuickBliss locations, for manicures and pedicures.)

  Day spas now have to come up with slicker packaging and elaborately creative treatments to distinguish themselves. They must compete for talented technicians.

  Last week, I tried three of the latest additions to sample some of the new tricks in state-of-the-art pampering.

  Maximus seems well run, with a slight high-tech advantage over the other new rivals. The big leather chairs in the shampoo area of the salon have motorized massage features, and I noticed that a toilet seat in the spa locker room offered this function, too. Calcasola has set up a marble "steam bar," so patrons embarking on facials can pause for a few minutes to have their pores opened by a mild blast of steam and oxygen while an attendant mixes a suitable "face cocktail" of cleansers and toners. The spa itself looked spotless, and the design was sterile chic: concrete floors and white-curtained glass walls.

  Simona Rusu, who has performed facials and various water therapies for 20 years, took me into the water room at Maximus for Calcasola's piece de resistance -- the water journey. This is a three-part excursion, beginning with a full-body salt scrub, then a hose-down with warm water from overhead jets. This is followed by soaking for 10 minutes in a tub of furiously bubbling water. The third phase -- a shower room where water falls on you at the rate of 300 liters a minute was not operational yet. Maximus has a straightforward menu of spa services, including a deep-treatment facial (US$90) and the all-in-one water journey and full body massage (US$140).

  Both the Eden and Brigitte Mansfield spas offered service that seemed to be no more than adequate. Eden is spacious, decorated with long billowing curtains dividing a lounge area where customers can have pedicures and reflexology treatments (US$75) while watching projection television.

  At Brigitte Mansfield, the masseuse who gave me a hot-stone massage was competent, but, with only two years of massage experience, she lacked Hathaway's know-how and sense of confidence. The spa itself, on a fourth floor overlooking Union Square, is all-white, thickly carpeted and has large treatment rooms.

  Mansfield, a former model who developed her own line of caviar-based skincare products, said she wanted a spa that emphasized traditional European recipes, like a creme-fraiche body wrap or a mustard powder foot bath. She agreed that Lower Manhattan, particularly SoHo, was now saturated with spas, but said she believed that by offering a soothing atmosphere and extra-large rooms, she can offer an alternative to places like Bliss.

  Kilgore said she was not concerned about a glut of spas. "I worry about myself and my own business, and not really about everyone else," she said. Still, she finds it intriguing that so many new spas are emphasizing space and relaxation, and such things as nature music, waterfalls and light therapies. "I just can't get into that," Kilgore said. "We're a little more tongue in cheek than that. People don't come to a spa expecting to have an ephiphany."
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