Est. 2011 — Los Angeles
About
The rest room on the second floor, after a morning treatment.
Serenity Boulevard
Aurae is a spa built around the hour, not the treatment menu. Fourteen quiet rooms, botanical formulations we can name the source of, and therapists who are never booked back to back.
How we began
Clara Vance opened Aurae in 2011 with two treatment rooms above a florist on Serenity Boulevard. The idea was narrow on purpose: fewer guests per day, longer sessions, and a consultation before every hand was laid. Fifteen years later the house occupies three floors and the ratio has not changed.
Growth has come from guests returning rather than from adding services. Roughly seven in ten appointments each month are made by someone who has been here before, which is the only figure we pay close attention to.
One of fourteen treatment rooms. Each is booked with a thirty-minute rest either side.
WHAT WE STAND FOR
We do not sell transformation. A facial will not reorder your life, and an hour of deep tissue work is not therapy. What a considered treatment can do is return you to a body you had stopped noticing, and that is a modest, repeatable, genuinely useful thing.
Every formulation used in the house is traceable to a grower or an atelier we have visited. Nothing is sold at the desk that a therapist has not worked with for a season. When a treatment is not right for a guest, we say so and suggest something shorter, cheaper, or nothing at all.
2011
Opened with two rooms
14
Treatment rooms, three floors
19
People on the standing team
7 in 10
Appointments from returning guests
Four Principles
01
The hour belongs to the guest
No session is shortened to make room for the next. Rooms are turned over on our time, not yours.
02
Named sources only
Every oil, clay and extract in the house can be traced to a grower or atelier by name. If we cannot name it, we do not use it.
03
Consultation before touch
Pressure, aromatics and focus are agreed in the first ten minutes, and can be changed at any point without explanation.
04
No upselling at the table
Therapists are not paid on retail. Anything recommended is written down for you to consider once you are dressed and out of the room.
ON THE SHELF
Three formulations used in almost every treatment, each worked with by our therapists for at least a season before it reached the desk.
Cleansing gel
Body
Facial serum
Face
Restorative cream
Face & hands
THE HOUSE
Aurae is kept by a standing team of nineteen — therapists, estheticians, a herbalist and the front desk — most of whom have been here longer than five years. We work under one name and share one calendar.
Clara Vance
Founder
Elena Moreau
Head Esthetician
