Down a dirt road in Desert Hot Springs, California, about 12 miles outside of Palm Springs, We Care Spa has been welcoming the Hollywood and fashion crowd for 38 years.
Donna Karan, Tom Ford, Venus Williams, hairstylist Sally Hershberger, actor Matt Bomer, actress Abigail Spencer and others pay more than $1,000 a night to eat nothing and experience a clarifying regimen of daily colonics, sloppy detox drinks and healthy baths in the 100s – oasis of one hectare, which has undergone a luxurious shine.
More from WWD
“It’s like going home,” says Karan, who has been to We Care more times than she can count. “It’s definitely a cleansing, but the cleansing aspect also has a spiritual aspect and it gives you the time and space to work with some of the most brilliant people.”
“The first day you miss food, day two you’re so hungry you could eat your arm and by day three you could starve yourself for the rest of your life,” says Ariana Lambert Smeraldo of Lily Lodge in Los Angeles Angeles, who is the best. as a florist for The Row, Staud, Carolina Herrera and others, and has been to We Care about ten times. “It’s like Ozempic without Ozempic.”
Visitors enter wellness nirvana by walking across a subterranean glass display case of healing crystals into a relaxing, light-filled living room where all the action centers around the lobby bar.
The only cocktails here, though, are the liquids that are the building blocks of the We Care program, including the powdered Organic Detox fiber drink with aloe juice chaser, designed to smooth things out; blood purifying and liver detoxifying teas; mint, lemon and citrus waters, and the nightly vegetable soups that hungry guests so eagerly await come at 5 p.m., you’d think they’d been flown in by Noma.
We Care has always had a certain mystique in Southern California, largely because of its daily colonics, in which a tube is inserted into the butt to flush water, coffee, chlorophyll and other things into the intestines and force the release of waste. and toxins, which are visible as they come out, thanks to a strategically placed mirror above the treatment table. Yes really.
Of course, in today’s hyper-wellness era, when green juice is available at the local 7-Eleven and moms are microdosing, people are more attuned to this kind of thing, and the daily 30-minute colon hydrotherapy sessions are kicking off. by most guests, albeit with a few chuckles.
Spencer calls We Care her “sanctuary” and says she has integrated it into her regular wellness routine. “My dirty little secret was that I was constantly ill from my late 20s through 30s and that retiring from We Care dramatically improved my health from the inside out.”
Founder Susana Belen, now 86 years old, started the program in 1986 to get her own health back on track after a difficult divorce, and then began teaching fasting and detoxification to friends and family in her adobe-style home with two Bedrooms. still part of the spa.
Friends told friends, and they wanted to come too. So Belen expanded her home and grew We Care organically. Designers and models visited to prepare for fashion weeks, and stars to prepare for awards season, in a decidedly rustic setting where guests mixed their own detox drinks.
Belen’s daughter Susan Lombardi, burned out by her career as a commercial model in Paris and fashion buyer for the Soho Generation store in New York, joined her in 1990 to run the business side and took the spa in a more luxurious direction. . She added luxurious amenities such as the sparkling main pool and pool bar, state-of-the-art gym, infrared sauna and steam room, and embellished the grounds with a medicine wheel, meditation pyramid and ancient labyrinth.
There are now 28 rooms and suites in a vast desert landscape with views of mountains, bougainvillia trees and Buddha heads. The rooms have oversized bathtubs, circadian light systems, yoga mats, rebounder trampolines and weights for those with exercise energy, which for most returns after a few days of fasting.
For those seeking a little more privacy, two new villas will be ready by the end of the year.
The move to create a more luxurious experience was inspired in part by Donna Karan’s many visits and a room Lombardi designed especially for her.
“Donna came here way back when we were at my mother’s house,” Lombardi recalled. “After we expanded a bit, there was one room in the corner and I decided to put $70,000 worth of stone in it and make it nice for Donna. And before you knew it, every customer with money wanted it… That showed me the demand was there.”
“I am so proud of them,” says Karan. “[Susana] is fantastic. What she has created, and her daughter with all her love, who has even greater potential, there is no place like it.”
The beauty and wellness options have also been expanded in recent years. There are more than 40 treatments to choose from, including Agent Nateur facials, mud detox, system recovery wraps with castor oil targeting gut health, shamanic healing, and an outdoor tent myofascial release. Classes can range from yoga and nutrition to digital detox and weekly fire ceremonies.
“I love how intimate but not intimate it is, how you can be talkative or alone, as spiritual or not as you want,” Smeraldo says of the atmosphere. “I never felt that if I didn’t participate, I would be doing something wrong.”
“It used to be more like the hippies sharing rooms and bathrooms. We would be on the phone with them explaining what a colon is and why,” says Lombardi, still a fashionista who was decked out in an all-black Chanel on a recent afternoon in the desert. “But as people kept coming and had such great results and word got out, their expectations have changed to where we are now and they want to know if the product is freeze-dried, if it comes from Mexico,” she adds. consumers are educated and eager to take the product home, which has also led to more promotions in that department.
People used to come to quit smoking, now they often come to quit sugar – and to improve their mental and spiritual health, she says.
“We don’t really promote it as weight loss, but weight loss is an added benefit. The other is the inner peace you get when you’re here long enough to do inner work, get grounded, have some vision and direction in your life, and understand autophagy,” she says of the theory that fasting leads to cellular recycling. “That’s why you leave here feeling great, otherwise the person with arthritis will forget their walking stick and we’ll have to send it to them.” We are like the intensified version of intermittent fasting. So it is much more than just weight loss.”
Since COVID-19, interest in the spiritual side has increased dramatically, she says. “It’s like opening Pandora’s box. If you see a therapist during the workday, leave your laptop for an hour and get back to it. It’s a whole different thing when you’re here for three, five, eight, ten days and peeling back the layers. If you work with a therapist while you’re here, you can dive to level 10, so everyone books that and wants it.”
In the high season, which is winter and early spring in the desert, there is often a two to three month waiting list to reserve a room at We Care. But the spa is looking for its next locations, perhaps in Florida or Mexico.
And Belen is still in her element every day, taking walks around the grounds and teaching her “Seven Steps to Health & Rejuvenation” classes to groups that increasingly include Millennials and Gen Zers, girls’ trips and mother-and-daughter duos. . “Her mission is to help people one by one, and then I get to use my creative and business brain so that we make a good team,” says Lombardi.
“Every day someone stops me and says thank you, I have changed and I feel good. Why am I going to stop doing that?” says Belen when asked about his pension. “I help a lot of people. Nothing special, I don’t teach science, I tell them what I know. It’s common sense.”
We Care Spa, 18000 Long Canyon Road, Desert Hot Springs, California, wecarespa.com; Two-night packages start at $2,019, seven-night packages at $6,149, and you can expect to book at least two months in advance.
The best of WWD