Joanna Vargas Skin Care

Profile

For over five years, Joanna Vargas was a top aesthetician at a salon she’s not legally allowed to name. Quick sleuthing, however, traces her to Tracie Martyn, where she served rejuvenation-on-a-platter to the city’s elite. Vargas eventually left to start a more humble venture of her own: a snug, two-room holistic center inside of a dour office building. Here, she and another aesthetician perform a tidy menu’s worth of anti-gravity, wrinkle-demolishing skin treatments. Her signature Triple Crown Facial is a fancy name for a three-step exfoliation, lymphatic drainage, and oxygenation process; her teen-centric Purifying Facial reduces acne especially along the jaw line. For post-winter sloughing, the full-body microdermabrasion therapy promises polished skin better than any scrub; instead of washing off dead skin in a post-treatment shower, it’s all removed with steamy hot towels and followed by a sweet-smelling Phyts moisturizer. — Chanize Thorpe