Janet Sartin

Profile

This spa’s ninety-something namesake founder retired in 2004, having revamped visages for more than five decades, but her well-schooled staff’s signature facials are still revered by powdered Upper East Side matriarchs and their rosy-skinned grandchildren. Because the spa’s trademark deep extractions are tempered with gentle massage and pore-minimizing clay masks, post-treatment blotchiness is kept at an absolute minimum. Thus, Miss Sartin’s—don’t call her Janet—is a de rigueur pit stop before afternoon board meetings and Christie’s auctions. The spa’s royalty-studded client list stretches back to the fifties, when a dewy-cheeked actress called Elizabeth Taylor was a regular; since then, the Kennedys and Reagans have made appearances through the glass-walled entrance. Inside the 2,400-square-foot space, past a boutique crowded with Sartin products like the best-selling Dual Performance Treatment foundation and the elasticity-boosting Vitamin C serum, are seven simply arrayed treatment rooms. Sixty-minute Swedish massages are popular complements to the famous facials, as are GentleWaves pulsing-light treatments, which arrived with great fanfare in late 2005. Many clients pop in weekly to bask in front of these wrinkle-combating LED panels, said to reduce pore size and boost collagen production. — Rose Reis