“Wait, your skin. I’m obsessed,” Sarah Akram says warmly when we meet for the first time. It’s the Sunday before the annual Met Gala in New York City, and the willowy 43-year-old has spent her weekend preparing the world’s most recognizable faces for the event’s red carpet. Now, she has her hands on my not-at-all-famous mug to give Robb Report an exclusive preview of her latest project: a rigorously customized facial she has been developing with Dior for the past two years.
The $1,300 service, unironically called the Haute Couture Treatment, is the most exclusive offering at the French maison’s first permanent spa in the United States, which sits atop its recently renovated Manhattan flagship on 57th Street. (While Akram is based in the nation’s capital, she’ll travel to New York for three to four days each month, through the end of the year, to perform a limited number of these facials.)
“It’s taking everything that I’ve cultivated in Washington, D.C.—the deep care, the touch, the transformative results— and we’re just elevating it to a whole new level of luxury and precision,” she says.
Dior’s first permanent spa in the United States was designed by architect Peter Marino.
Jonathan Taylor
That approach has won the renowned aesthetician a roster of well-known devotees since she opened her eponymous spa in 2015, including Dwyane Wade, Glenn Close, Sheryl Lee Ralph, Kate Walsh, Chelsea Handler, and Billy Porter—and those are just the ones who tag Akram in their Instagram selfies. Asked if anyone walking the halls of power comes to her Alexandria location, she understandably turns circumspect. “Just imagine all the characters you see on TV,” she says with a laugh. “That’s about as much as I can say.”
Akram is as serious about her craft as she is about client confidentiality. Her two-hour protocol relies on bespoke machinery and devices, and she uses L’Or de Vie, Dior’s highest-end skincare line, to administer it. She’ll also deploy the company’s spa products, Les Solutions Professionnelles, now available to buy in the States for the first time.
The facial begins with a medical probe, administered by a Dior aesthetician, that measures your skin’s levels of hydration, elasticity, and collagen—and guides what Akram does next. In my case, that means microdermabrasion to smooth out patches of rough texture; microcurrent therapy to boost collagen production; cold lasers—a form of light therapy—to help reduce hyperpigmentation; cryotherapy to improve blood flow; and even negative-ion infusion, which Akram finds especially beneficial for people in urban environments.
Some of the products used in her signature facial.
Courtesy of Dior
“If you were to just do that single thing alone, you’d see a big difference in your skin,” she says of this step, which uses negatively charged molecules to oxygenate your skin, simulating the kind of clear, pure air often found in so-called blue zones. “You don’t even have to do any of the other stuff.”
After Akram is done with her attentive, thorough ministrations, my skin is glowing—smooth, even, clear, and somehow brighter than it was when she started. But I also feel a profound sense of calm, as though I’ve been thoroughly cared for. It’s a state she says she tries to help all of her clients achieve, whether they have to be on TV or not.
“The thing that everybody has in common is that they need an oasis to escape to, to hit that reset button,” she says. “I think [people will] be surprised by the holistic nature of this experience.” That is, of course, if you can secure an appointment.
