About seven minutes after meeting Ställe Studios founder and lead esthetician Elizabeth Grace Hand, who's dressed in an impeccable black suit and kitten heels, I’m stripped down to a strapless terrycloth robe. Somewhere around the twenty-five minute mark of our encounter, as Hand is lightly zapping my face with a collagen-stimulating laser, she knows my astrological sign (Scorpio), how long it’s been since I met my husband (nearly a decade) and why I moved to New York (work!). She also knows that I’m fairly insecure about my dry, stress-breakout-prone skin and all the coffee I can’t resist drinking to get it that way.
Facials are usually an intimate treatment. After all, a stranger is standing thisclose to your face and examining flaws you didn’t even know you had. But 50ish minutes into a session-slash-interview with Hand feels more like catching up with a close friend in her impeccably decorated apartment—never mind that we just met, and that she’s inspecting every millimeter of my pores while chatting about her business and her love of celebrity memoirs. Between the Swedish Grace-inspired decor—all black and white and creamy khaki, with vintage photographs and tea served in dainty Hermès cups—and Hand’s windchime voice, she has crafted an environment that tempts even me, a somewhat guarded journalist, to be a little vulnerable. When our time is up and I’m stumbling out into the late afternoon sunlight with far glowier skin than I came with, I’m half inclined to ask Hand if we can get coffee.
It’s Hand’s precise combination of an inviting attitude, intensive treatments, and borderline therapeutic service that’s transformed her three-year-old business into a rising if you know, you know destination for bespoke facials. Aside from offering fan-favorite C02 masks, hydrating infusions, and sculpting buccal massages, Ställe Studios is fronted by a founder that clients can trust like a close friend. Naturally, the Howard St. studio has become a haven for fashion and beauty editors, A-list celebrities, and the category of effortlessly cool twenty- and thirty-somethings Hand calls the “downtown It girl.”
Hand’s business name comes from the Swedish word “smultronställe." (Hand's husband is Swedish.) The literal translation is “wild strawberry patch,” but the figurative definition is what Hand tries to capture at her studio. “It's a place that you go to that no one knows about,” she tells me as she wraps my face in a warm towel. “But it's a secret place. It's almost like you want to keep it because it's so magical and amazing and you go there to feel really good. It's just a hidden, amazing spot.”
Stepping off the elevator into the spacious waiting room, which is lined with jars of Augustinus Bader products and photogenic low-to-the-ground furniture, it does feel like leaving behind the city for an It-girl oasis. But hidden, this studio is not. Ställe Studios’ estheticians (including Hand) see at least six clients a day, seven days a week. Longtime clients aren’t shy about sharing exactly where they get their glowy skin. “I’m so obsessed with Elizabeth and Ställe Studios facials that if heaven doesn’t have them, then I’m not going,” says Richelle Mary, a medspa owner. “It’s the best investment that I’ve ever made.”
Jess Buka, a health chef, says Hand’s treatments have gone above and beyond treating her cystic acne and contouring her face–two impressive feats on their own. “Her hands are those of the gods,” Buka says. “She’s the personification of self-care—you walk out of her studio and feel like you’ve leveled up your entire life.”
Hand has the sort of upbringing that feels pre-ordained for a favorite facialist of Hollywood stars and fashion editors, but she needed some leveling up to carve out her corner of New York City’s crowded market for transformative facials and skincare. She tells me she was always the friend doing everyone else’s hair and makeup on spring break trips in college; a highlight of her teen years was driving an hour to her nearest Sephora in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, with her mom and her sister. When she was living in Atlanta in her early post-grad era, she convinced her male roommates to start using K-Beauty sheet masks.
After a period working in fashion, Hand went to esthetician school on a quest to reconnect with her love of beauty in a professional sense. After an intro to Barbara Sturm at a networking event, Hand sent cold emails until she was hired for the famed label’s wholesale facial team. Then came Covid, and a pause on most beauty and skincare treatments. But even with salons closed, women still wanted their facials, Hand remembers. “So I was like, come to my apartment. That's how I started my own thing.”
Hand set up a spa in her one-bedroom apartment in July 2021, sending her then-fiancé, Jon, out of the house while clients came in. Soon, her combination of medspa tools and best-in-class products generated enough business to fund a temporary, non-apartment space–and eventually, a move into the SoHo retreat I visited in September.
These days, appointments at Ställe attract viral TikTok reviews, plugs in insider-y Substack newsletters, and often, a waitlist. Manifesting, Hand tells me mid-infusion, couldn’t have prepared her for how fast things have changed. “I would have never even [considered] this,” she says. “I would have laughed at myself.”
Actress Gabriella Piazza was one of Hand’s living room clients who still goes in for regular facials. She credits Ställe Studios with changing her life and her attitude on skincare, educating her on the regimens that work best for her skin. “She’s also wildly stylish and the nicest person on earth in a world where beauty can feel too exclusive to even try,” Piazza says of Hand.
Hand isn't the type of skincare expert who will lead with what you're doing wrong, or shame you for your bad habits. (She was certainly very nice about my flaky, dry, fashion week skin.) At Ställe Studios, Hand says you can come as you are; she'll gently get you on track, in skincare and even in life. Clients will often confide in her about their jobs and their New York dating horror stories. Some get so close after their monthly visits, Hand has been invited to their weddings.
As clients open up, “I get to be the therapist, which is really fun," she says. "It's always more fun to deal with other people's problems and not to think about yours.”
Of course, clients come to Hand for their skin first and their social lives second. "There's a lot of places where it's relaxing and it's a good atmosphere," Hand concedes. "But you leave and of course you're hydrated...but nothing else really happened." Her studio is the opposite: The customizable menu of peels, masks, massages, and liquid microneedling works just as hard as Hand does during each booking.
A day after my first trip to Ställe Studios, I get a text from Elizabeth herself, checking in on my skin. I know she's just doing the work of any good facialist, but I couldn't help feeling like I'd just heard from a friend.
