L’Institut Sothys in Midtown is one of more than two hundred area spas offering $50 specials during Spa Week
Through April 18, $50 per treatment
www.spaweek.com
Spa Week is an annual festival of $50 facials, massages, manicures, pedicures, and other health and beauty treatments designed to spread knowledge about spas to a broader range of people. Since its inception in 2004, the event has booked more than 350,000 customers across the country, allowing average Americans to sample cutting-edge clinical skin and body therapies such as photo (light-based) facials and microdermabrasion as well as good old-fashioned pampering. The special $50 spots, which can regularly run from $75 to $500, sell out early, so find the one you want fast and make your reservation. The promotion features more than two hundred spas, most in Manhattan but also in Brooklyn, Queens, Long Island, and Westchester. Among the ritziest is Caudalie Vinispa at the Plaza Hotel, one of fewer than half a dozen outposts of this groundbreaking French skincare line; using the active ingredient in grapes, reservatrol, the spa will be offering such treatments as the Vinitherapie facial and pedicure. For water rather than wine, the downtown Great Jones Spa on Great Jones Street can’t be beat; all three of their Spa Week treatments, including bikini wax, mani/pedi, and blowout, include passes to the sumptuous Water Lounge. On 57th St. and Sixth Ave., the American flagship of the venerable French L’Institut Sothys is featuring forty-five-minute massages, bikini waxes, and their signature seasonal facial. Every season Sothys changes the natural ingredients in their skin treatments: this spring is the raspberry and rhubarb facial, chosen for the fruit-and-vegetable combo’s skin-healing and rejuvenating benefits, not just their tasty tastes and scents. Exhale Spa, with locations on Central Park South, in the Meatpacking District, and on the Upper East Side, offers their usual slate of mind/body wellness activities, including yoga classes with well-known teachers Susan Orem and Dana Strong; for Spa Week they are offering full-length hour-long fusion massages and true facials. But that’s only the tip of the iceberg; log on to the official Spa Week website to choose from among the many unusual treatments available.