Profile

Before establishing this immaculate, surprisingly quiet warren of treatment rooms just a floor above the hum of Lexington Avenue, Rosangela Slonsky spent twenty years as an esthetician and plastic-surgeon’s assistant in her native Rio de Janeiro. Upon her arrival in New York, she immediately set up a private traveling practice, bringing to clients’ homes all of the skills she’d practiced back in Brazil, including skin analysis, customized facials, waxing, eyebrow shaping, and meticulous manicures and pedicures. After trading in the nomadic life for this permanent location in 2006, she expanded her offerings to include medi-spa treatments like crystal-wand microdermabrasion, laser hair removal, electrolysis, and laser facials, plus spray-tanning, shiatsu and hot-stone massages, herbal body scrubs, and back facials with Vichy showers. (All treatments use Slonsky’s own line of fragrance-free products, available for sale in the cushy reception area.) Though she now employs a staff of six to tend to her steady stream of clients, Slonsky still performs many services herself, including the application of permanent makeup like subtly tattooed eyeliner, eyebrow liner, and lip-liner—big business in Brazil, and steadily gaining popularity here. When she’s not pampering one of her customers, though, she’s usually found welcoming them, offering glasses of wine, chatting in the reception area, and generally presiding over the premises like an effusive and glamorous auntie. — Sarah Gold