When Joanna Czech outgrew her jewel-box space on the top floor of The Webster’s Soho store in March 2021, a proper New York flagship was the obvious next step. The celebrity-favorite facialist, who splits her time between her studio in Dallas and residencies in Miami, Los Angeles, and the Hamptons, had racked up a six month-long waitlist and her debut product, “The Kit” —a seven-piece collection of travel essentials including facial wipes, a bio-cellulose hydrating mask, a pH-controlling toner, two serums, and two moisturizers—was about to launch. So she began work on a 2,200 square foot space a few blocks away on Grand Street, and readied herself and her business for a September opening. And then everything went pear-shaped.
“We were homeless,” Czech recalls of a brutal year in which construction delays and contractor disputes forced her to walk away from her solo Soho lease. But the resilient Polish-born 59-year-old is particularly adept at starting over: after leaving her beloved Sava Spa in Washington Heights in 2008, she rebuilt her career on the merit of 37 years of science-backed skincare know-how, and two of the best hands in the business. “We figured it out,” she says, detailing how one makeshift treatment room became two at the Thompson Hotel while the dust settled and she waited over a year for another opportunity to find a place of her own. Similar in layout and size, with dizzyingly high 12-foot ceilings and great light, that place turned out to be on the second floor of a classic cast iron loft building on Howard Street, sandwiched between Rick Owens and R13 Denim—a boon for Czech, a fashion girl at heart whose thick, Thierry Lasry frames are almost as legendary as the way she maneuvers her micro-current gloves. Tonight, Amber Valletta and Jenna Lyons, who are among Czech’s many loyal friends and clients, will host a party to officially christen the new skin spa.
Designed in collaboration with creative director Jeang Kim’s Studio Oro, white oak details and cotton and linen drapery offset walls painted in Farrow and Ball’s Shadow White. In addition to a proper home for The Czech List, a curation of the facialist’s own products and selections from a handful of hand-picked brands, there are three treatment rooms, which include a designated home for a head-to-toe LED light bed and a custom Hästens treatment bed, a luxury that truly needs to be experienced to be believed. “I could live here,” Czech jokes of the residential-like layout that includes a gigantic bathroom—with shower—that is larger than the bedroom of my tiny Brooklyn apartment. Its back wall features a custom neon sign with an outline of breasts and the words “Nipples Up”—Czech’s oft-quoted guidance about beginning your skincare routine on your décolletage—presenting a highly Instagrammable photo opp that will likely be flooding your thread in the coming days after the studio officially opens tomorrow.
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