To Brighten a Gloomy Spring, Color Me Tan, on the Double

By Katherine Roseman - The Times   

   If slogging through final exams isn't enough to dampen the spirits of a graduate student, a depressingly rainy spring day is.

   So last weekend, Alexandra Buckley, 25, who is studying for a master's degree in education at New York University, cast her books aside and took charge. "The weather had been so horrible and I needed a boost," she said. "I thought a nice tan might do the trick."

   She popped into a Hollywood Tans salon on the Upper East Side to try out the newest wave in sunless bronzing: the spray-on tan.

   Almost a year after becoming a staple in Los Angeles for pale starlets desperate to look healthy and well rested for awards shows, the spray-on tan has made its way east just in time to help New Yorkers salvage a sunless spring.

   The tans, lasting about a week and ranging in price from $30 to over $100, are delivered in claustrophobic phone-booth-size stalls by tiny jets that mist clients with a full-body glow, or, at more upscale salons, by technicians wielding individual misters.

   For those who believe golden skin is as vital to the appearance as a complete set of teeth, it is the biggest innovation in tanning since, well, the sun.

   "I am very tan," said Gilbert Y. Vanderweide, the visual director for Henri Bendel in New York, describing the results of his visit to Completely Bare, where an attendant will apply an all-over tanning mist for $75. Assuming the summer sun emerges, Mr. Vanderweide will revert to baking au naturel. Until then, though, he is a new devotee of the paint job. "It was three weeks worth of sun in a day," he said.

   Bottled tans, introduced in the 1960's, were once avoided for turning users the color of a Cheeto. Today's lotions leave skin with a natural-looking tan, but problems arise applying the stuff: anything less than a monklike focus results in streaks and blotches. In the last few years salons stepped in, offering flawless professional applications. But who wants to spend upward of $75 for a five-day tan?

   And that is where the $20 to $30 spray-on tan offered in booths comes in. Right now there are two companies dominating that market: Hollywood Tans, which has patented the six-second tan it offers at its salons, and Mystic Tan, which provides booths to independent salons. Both companies report that business has doubled in the last year. And the weather has not hurt.

   "People are coming in, complaining left and right about the rain," said Katrina Mullins, manager of Future Tan in Midtown, which offers the Mystic Tan procedure. "They want to get brown."

   "It's insane what's happening," said Ralph Venuto Sr., founder and chief executive of Hollywood Tans, which introduced its spray-on booths in Los Angeles last summer. He said the company now has 150 salons in 14 states. To meet demand, he said, 85 to 90 more franchises are to open this year.

   But as Ms. Buckley discovered, the process is not foolproof. Speaking on the telephone four days after her maiden journey, she said her face was splotchy. "My back was polka-dotted," she added. "It was sort of a frightening sight." She said she was told to relax, that the tan would "even out" in several hours. But Ms. Buckley raced home and scrubbed her face clean.

   To help others avoid Ms. Buckley's fate, a dozen recent recipients of spray-on tans were interviewed and a half-dozen more were sent into the driving rain in search of a sunless sun-kissed glow. These guinea pigs tested both the automated booths that are quick and affordable but likely to leave hard-to-reach body parts streaked, and the expensive, time-intensive, manually applied treatments, which give uniform tans, but at a price.

Here are the recommendations and impressions of the newly bronzed:

   FOLLOW DIRECTIONS At salons with automated booth mistings, an instructional video recommends slathering a protective cream (provided by the salon) on the body parts — hands, feet, fingernails and toenails — that do not ordinarily tan. It is an important part of the process. Just ask Clayton Cooke, a caterer and chef. "After looking at my feet," Mr. Cooke said, "I finally understood what Tom Ridge meant by `Orange Alert.' " Otherwise, Mr. Cooke, who tried the $30 Mystic Tan treatment at E-Z Tan in the Flatiron district, liked the results. "I'm very bronze and I don't usually get an all-over tan like this."

"I look pretty good," he added, "but my feet are shocking."

   DON'T WEAR WHITE After standing "like a scarecrow" for 30 minutes while a technician at a Paul Lebrecque Salon and Spa in Manhattan sprayed her with a hose, Elizabeth Victory, a designer of bath accessories, said she emerged "the tannest I've ever been." However, when settling the bill, for $75, the technician wondered about the color of her bed sheets, which Ms. Victory took as a bad sign. "I asked her if I should sleep in pajamas," she recalled. "Definitely," she said.

   BE PREPARED TO BARE ALL "I think I look fabulous," said Julie Fowler, an interior stylist who paid $75 for the manual spray technique at Completely Bare near Union Square. But she urges prospective tanners to leave their timidity at the door. "You cannot be modest," she said. "The woman was getting down on her haunches spraying every nook and cranny."

   DON'T MOVE AND DON'T BREATHE Rachael Combe, Elle's managing editor, ventured to Bliss Spa, where she stood being misted by a technician with her arms extended for so long that they began to shake with fatigue. What's more, she was concerned about the safety of breathing in the mist. "I tried not to breathe," she said. When she eventually did, "I worried what it was doing to my brain cells." She does, however, love the tan. "It looks really natural," she said of her $105 glow.

   BEWARE OF THE FOOTIES Alanna Fincke, a magazine editor and yoga instructor, tested the Mystic Tan for $29 at Beach Bum on the Upper West Side and is pleased with her golden look. "It's a ray of hope in this awful weather," she said. But the booties the salon gave her to cover up the bottom of her feet have left lines. "It's a good thing it's been raining, because I couldn't wear sandals right now," she said..