Marcia Kilgore
Blissed Out

Not so long ago, spas were places you had to get to on a plane. By the time you flew back, there was the chance that -- if the weather was bad or the cocktails were good -- you might actually look worse than when you left. Marcia Kilgore is largely responsible for bringing the spa experience into the fabric of city life, where it can make a difference. Kilgore started giving facials in her East Village apartment. Since she opened Bliss, her urban oasis on Prince St. three years ago, her entertainingly named services -- "the Herbie," "the Lemon Peel" -- have earned her a celebrity following that includes Julia Roberts, Demi Moore, and Jennifer Lopez. In March, they also earned her a reported $30 million payday when she sold a majority share in Bliss to the French luxury conglomerate LVMH. Rich though she is, she still leaves the relaxing to others. Now she's supervising the opening of new branches on 57th Street and in London, and planning a chain of nail bars. "I've spent my whole life building towards this," she says. And she keeps in touch with what it's built on: She still gives facials.
Anna Rachmansky

Henry Blodget
Amazon Explorer

This time last year, Henry Blodget was a relative unknown burrowing away at CIBC Oppenheimer. But when an analyst at Merrill Lynch predicted that Amazon.com, then trading at $240, would sink to $50 a share, Blodget begged to differ. In fact, he projected a price target of $400 within a year. That was in December 1998. Amazon topped his figure eleven months ahead of schedule, and by February, Blodget, 33, was the lead Internet analyst at Merrill Lynch, replacing Mr. $50-a-Share. "I was sick of taking my price targets up in $20 increments and having them beaten in two days," Blodget says. "It probably had a much larger impact on public awareness of Amazon, and I felt my career was doing just fine." But, he adds coyly, "it certainly raised visibility all around." His recent successes don't mean Blodget's a cheerleader for all things Internet, though. His advice to clients is to keep most of their money invested in quality e-stocks like Yahoo! and AOL -- and he predicts a big shakeout in coming years. But he still has deep faith in the transforming powers of the Internet. "Will it be another industrial revolution? I don't know. But the key is the speed with which it is happening." Just look at his career path.
Michael Steele

Ariane Daguin
Fowl Player

"Nobody had thought of it before," says Ariane Daguin. Fifteen years ago, hardly a restaurant in New York served anything more adventurous than beef, pork, and chicken. Daguin, on the other hand, had come from southwest France, and knew that New York's chefs were, so to speak, hungry. She opened D'Artagnan, supplying game and foie gras mostly to expats cooking in the high-end kitchens of New York, in 1985. A decade and a half on, we're living in the Year of the Liver: Foie gras from the Hudson Valley has gone from being highly exotic to verging on hegemony. Pheasants and quail and poussins crowd expense accounts across town, from Aureole to Le Zoo, and Daguin is by far the largest supplier, with better than 90 percent of the restaurant market. Her giant operation in Newark has expanded beyond the pros, too; her wares (along with those of Hudson Valley Foie Gras, which D'Artagnan distributes) are available to home chefs through a toll-free number. Duck confit can land on your doorstep in 24 hours, no more difficult to procure than an L.L. Bean rucksack. D'Artagnan has competition now, of course. But Daguin knows what it takes to remain at the top: "We try to stay ahead of the game."
Christopher Bonanos

Courtney Sloane
Sampler Style

Courtney Sloane is to hip-hop what Mario Buatta is to high society. She's a mix mistress of design who understands the style in which every newly platinum star wants to live -- in a word, "maximalism." Sloane (and her growing firm, Alternative Design) translates the hip-hop aesthetic -- sampling, shout-outs, powerful rhythms -- into architecture and interior design, pairing industrial metal with twenty-first-century polymers, sleek modernism with a recognition of African-American roots. She's done striking spaces for Queen Latifah, Puffy, Enyce, and BET, among many others. And she's sharing the wealth. The AD office fills a floor of an old retail building in downtown Jersey City, a formerly depressed zone Sloane says has "the pulse of something about to happen." AD's highest-profile project to date is "Roots, Rhymes, and Rage: The Hip-Hop Story," a megashow that will travel to the Brooklyn Museum next spring, complete with D.J. software, video, and visuals potentially more arresting than those currently on display. "It should be scandalous," says Sloane, with a wink. "We're hoping Giuliani will give us the same kind of love he's giving 'Sensation.' "
Alexandra Lange

Marc Jacobs
Soft Touch

Marc Jacobs doesn't design for everyone -- let's face it, most of us can't afford his cashmere-and-calfskin take on vintage downtown cool. But when it comes to shaping the attitude we want in our clothes, almost no one has had more impact over the past few fashion seasons than Marc Jacobs. In 1999, he created an enviable number of those must-have pieces that the fashion elite can't live without and lesser brands make fortunes knocking off: He wowed us with his fall collection's Love Story-era preppy hippie chic (and sent many of us racing out for long striped scarves and stacked-heel boots), and he made our mouths water for the candy-colored patent-leather monogram accessories he made for Louis Vuitton (where he's been designing ready-to-wear since 1997). Last spring, Jacobs moved to Paris, but his most recent Vuitton show was pure Americana: a ripped-neck logo T-shirt paired with a baseball cap, a varsity-style leather jacket with capped sleeves, and a monogram bag slung messenger-style across the chest. Marc Jacobs may have taken himself to the Left Bank, but you can't take New York out of Marc Jacobs.
Shyama Patel

Laurent Tourondel
Leaving Las Vegas

Last year, Food and Wine magazine pronounced Laurent Tourondel, then overseeing a Las Vegas casino restaurant, one of America's ten best new chefs. Last June, he came to New York to prove it to us. It didn't take long. Within two months, his Cello had wrested an elusive three-star review from the New York Times, despite the paper's newfound reputation as a churlishly harsh grader. There were early comparisons to Le Bernardin, but Tourondel has managed, with such inspired creations as warm lobster emulsion in Sauternes gêlée, salmon carpaccio slathered with citrus caviar cream, and a thrillingly tart construction of meringue-banana-and-passion-fruit sorbet, to unassumingly establish a culinary style all his own. It revolves around pure jolts of flavor and breathtaking presentations, plus a free hand with boom-year luxuries like caviar and foie gras. On his own, untethered terms, Tourondel -- who turns 33 on Christmas -- has finally become the big fish in a very big pond.
Robin Raisfeld