Photographs courtesy Dream Spa & Salon
At the new Dream Spa & Salon in Greenwich, you can heat up and cool down at once in the Dream Experience.
It’s a shower/sauna in which spa founder Lori Dodd collaborated with Klaff’s home design staff to feature rainwater, light therapy, chromo therapy with different hues, thermo therapy with sauna-style heat and aroma therapy with scented oils dispersed in the air.
Indeed the Dream Experience illustrates the Mae West maxim: “Too much of a good thing … can be wonderful.”
That bit of West wisdom is among the quotes and single words inscribed on the spa’s white walls in silvery letters that bridge the clarity of print and the elegance of script. They contribute to a sensuous environment that transports you to another world, even though you’re mere feet from tony Greenwich Avenue.
Sinuous woodwind sounds intrigue the ear without being intrusive. The fresh, earthy scent of South African Charlotte Rhys’ line of spa products, exclusive to Dream in the United States, wafts through the air, suggesting a woodland in spring. Touch comes into play in a variety of services, ranging from massages to manicures. A gray and white interior design, dotted with silvery touches (beaded curtains and desk skirts), soothes the eye. Dodd calls it “50 shades of calm.”
But perhaps what really defines Dream Greenwich as a delight for the senses is the way the staff – including manager Sandra Warren, coordinator Desiree Miranda and resident colorist Pia Garcia – quietly engage you with coffee, tea and a receptive manner.
“When you come in here, you’re going to escape everything else,” Warren says, “and you’ll come out feeling completely detoxed.”
“We like to think of ourselves as a destination spa within a day spa,” adds Dodd, who opened Dream Greenwich last June, about a dozen years after creating Dream Westport in her hometown. “We promote ourselves as a luxury wellness environment.”
What separates Dream Greenwich from many other spas is its commitment to the concept.
“Thank you for dreaming,” Miranda says as she answers the phone to book a mother-daughter bikini wax.
Clients – 65 percent female, 35 percent male, Dodd says – come a few minutes early to relax in the Dream Lounge with tea, ginger snaps and magazines. The spa’s inspirational words guide you through the intimate 3,500-square-foot space to nine treatment rooms that include a Couple’s Room.
“The environment is part of the experience,” Dodd says. “We all need a place to go to. …In Westport, people come to us when they need to get away. We’re a friend. …We’re trying to promote that in Greenwich, too.”
Dodd came to the spa biz with a background in interior design, cosmetics and high-end retail (at the old Barneys in lower Manhattan). When she married and moved to Westport, she brought her love of spas with her. In a freestanding building there, she created a “clean, classic, timeless” spa – green walls, dark wood floors – that opened in August 2000. Dodd says she waited a long time for the right opportunity and locale in Greenwich, which turned out to be the site of a former day spa. Dream Greenwich has a different vibe from Dream Westport, one she describes as “hip and groovy, but calm.”
The clientele ranges from preteen girls having their first spa experience with their moms to businessmen who equate keeping up their looks with a competitive edge. But to all of them, Dodd says the same thing, “We invite you to dream.”
The Dream Spa & Salon, at 151 Greenwich Ave., is open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mondays; 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays; 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. Thursdays and 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sundays by appointment. For more information, call (203) 629-2525 or visit dreamdayspa.com. n
