Vogue Magazine Features Roger Greenwald’s Work
This article was originally published in Vogue Magazine Online and written by Kate Bush, Beauty Editor of Vogue Magazine.
One scenic train ride north along the Hudson River and a 15-minute walk will land you at the foot of Main Street in downtown Beacon, New York, where galleries and coffee shops and the town’s only day spa speckle the strip. You can tell the latter apart from the other shops because its facade is storybook sweet, a tall and thin redbrick townhouse that touts black-and-gold trimming and a terrace on top.
Everything about the Inn and Spa at Beacon is simple: the brunch (croissants and fruit); the elevator (a jewel-box lift that somehow feels Parisian); the rooms (there are 12 and their walls all painted the same slate gray). And then there’s the spa. With just a few types of massages and facials offered, none of which include ultrasound paddles or microdermabrasion wands or any type of machinery, save for the occasional hot stone and ceremonial steam, it’s a welcome edit on the ever-expansive wellness menu that touts treatments and add-ons for every ailment imaginable. “I wanted it to be a refuge of sorts,” says owner and architect Roger Greenwald in a hushed voice, an appropriate volume for the inn’s solarium, where everything is still except for the flickering fireplace.
And so, on a recent Sunday, this overscheduled and unfastened editor left her New York City neurosis at the door and entered a low-lit room that housed a heated bed covered with a floral quilt, the type of throw you’d find at an antique market in Virginia. A wooden armoire stored products by Naturopathica, the holistic line made from organic ingredients by herbalist and healer Barbara Close, who has two bustling spas of her own in Chelsea and East Hampton.
After a quick discussion with my technician, Diane—What did I want? To look less tired; How did I want to feel? Like I was less tired—she decided to rely on a cherry enzyme peel to rid away puffiness and fine lines and leave me looking “brighter.” After a double cleansing—first with a chamomile milk, which featured the anti-inflammatory as well as rose water flower and moringa, a seed extract native to India and known for its purifying qualities, and then an oat polish that smelled comforting and faintly reminiscent of the oatmeal baths I took as a child during cold winters in Chicago—she exfoliated my face with the aforementioned enzyme peel.
One quick round of extractions, and a white tea antioxidant mask mixed with an aloe gel formula later (“Natural remedies such as aloe, coconut oil, even honey, are great for your skin,” says Diane), I awoke out of my daze amid a spritz of mist that smelled of sweet honey and flowers. Still barely conscious as she performed a soothing arm massage of lavender oil and careful strokes to encourage lymphatic drainage, she turned back to my face in hopes of clearing my sinuses in no less than 30 minutes. (She was successful.)
I left feeling calm and rejuvenated, my face aglow (and protected by SPF infused with lavender and turmeric root) in the midday sun. And though there was no new technique or technology or inside tip I took away with me, I thrived on the spa’s lack of bells and whistles, a refreshing antidote to the sometimes clinically efficient treatments that Manhattan thrives on. I turned toward Dia:Beacon, which is mere minutes away on foot, and stepped into the crowd of cloaked locals and day-trippers. Only after I leave do I think to ask what treatment I received: Pure Results, I later learned, a treatment made even more luxurious by the fact that I didn’t even have to ask for it—it was simply chosen for me.
The Inn and Spa at Beacon, 151 Main Street, Beacon, New York; 845.205.2900; innspabeacon.com