Cached in The Carlyle hotel on the Upper East Side, the Sense spa is making headlines for its unabashedly luxurious bent. Both Vanity Fair and the New York Times’ T Magazine recently reviewed the place, and the consensus was clear: This is the place to evoke Great Depression-era excess in the name of the new Depression.

Designed by interior designer Mark Zeff, Sense is about as exclusive as spas go in New York, with just five intimate, super-private treatment rooms, a relaxation room, duet suite, and steam rooms. To get to them, you walk through a barrel-vaulted staircase blanketed with ultra-spendy mosaic platinum squares. VF says it’s like being “cocooned in luxury.”