Annika Barriteau of Haven Spa: Beauty, Led by the Heart

There is a certain kind of first moment that tells you everything you need to know about a person. Not credentials, not origin stories—but taste. The way someone notices texture. Fit. Ease. What they will and won’t tolerate.

When I meet Annika Barriteau, owner of Haven Spa + La Lume Aesthetics in Rhinebeck, she immediately compliments my Janessa Leone hat. From there, we’re off—not talking skin or treatments, but fedoras. Soft ones. The kind that bends a little, settles in, and improves with wear.

“I’m a huge fedora fan,” she says. “I’m very particular about it.”

We talk about big hair, real-sized heads, hats that sit too high, or try too hard. She likes malleable. Lived-in. We pull up Janessa Leone on our phones—investment hats, unfussy silhouettes, Bianca Jagger energy. The subtext is immediate: Annika is not interested in spectacle. She’s interested in things that work—and look great.

Annika is not interested in spectacle. She’s interested in things that work—and look great.

This, it turns out, is also her entire philosophy of beauty.

Over the past five years, Annika has quietly shaped Haven Spa into something rarer than a traditional day spa or a flashy medical practice. It sits somewhere steadier in between: grounded, ethical, results-driven, and deeply human.

It helps that Annika comes to aesthetics with uncommon authority. “I am the physician’s assistant to a cardiac surgeon,” she tells me, matter-of-factly. “I do open-heart surgery for a living.”

She has spent nearly two decades in surgical medicine, specializing in vascular, thoracic, plastic, and open-heart procedures. She still shows up at Vassar Brothers Medical Center regularly. She still scrubs in for surgeries where the stakes are absolute.

Annika states her age plainly—and you pause. Not because it’s sensitive, but because it doesn’t compute. She has three teenage children, runs two practices, and still assists in open-heart surgery—and looks easily twenty years younger. Her skin is luminous and unlined, her face expressive and entirely her own. Not tight. Not overworked. Just remarkably intact.

It’s the kind of result that makes you listen more closely.

Her path into aesthetic medicine had nothing to do with vanity—or money. “I was always intrigued,” she says, “by what motivates a person to want to do something to their face.” What she saw, again and again, was not narcissism, but confidence—or the quiet loss of it.

“I was always intrigued by what motivates a person to want to do something to their face.” – Annika Barriteau

Women in midlife. Careers humming. Families cared for. Bodies changing. Menopause arrives without apology.

“One day you look in the mirror,” she says, “and you’re like, ‘Oh my God. Life is literally sitting on my face.’”

Her work, then, became less about alteration and more about recognition. “How can I help you look at the woman that you see every day,” she asks, “and love her again?”

“How can I help you look at the woman that you see every day—and love her again?” – Annika Barriteau

At Haven, Annika’s approach is deliberately restrained. She rejects frozen faces, overfilled lips, jawlines sculpted into sameness. Her ideal outcome is quieter. “People look at you and go, ‘You look refreshed. You look rested. Something’s different,’” she says. “But they just can’t really pinpoint what.”

She laughs when she describes herself this way, but she’s serious. “I kind of became a magician.”

That restraint matters even more in the Hudson Valley, where aesthetic procedures are still met with skepticism. “It’s almost all education here,” she says. Clients worry about looking unnatural—about losing themselves. Annika meets them where they are, often by using herself as proof. “I do a lot of these procedures to myself,” she says plainly. “I don’t want people to see a Kardashian. We’re not Kardashians.”

Most of her practice isn’t about chasing trends, but preserving skin health over time. Start small. Stay consistent. Build trust.

“A lot of these consultations,” Annika says, “are heart-to-heart conversations.” What surfaces isn’t vanity so much as life itself: divorces, empty nests, aging parents, careers that end sooner than expected. Annika leads with her heart—but she is also unsentimental in the way that matters. She is the steady, clear-eyed friend you want beside you, the one who knows when to listen and when to stop you.

“Sometimes I have to say, ‘This is not going to solve what’s bothering you,’” she tells me. She pauses. “It’s not your face.”

That clarity is nonnegotiable. When a line needs to be held, she holds it. If a treatment feels misaligned—emotionally, anatomically, ethically—she won’t proceed. “No,” she tells clients, gently but firmly. “I will not do that to your face.”

“I have a conscience in this business,” she adds. “I’m doing it from a place of passion.”

“I have a conscience in this business. I’m doing it from a place of passion.” – Annika Barriteau

Her refusal is part of the care.

That same realism shapes her view of beauty culture’s current extremes, particularly Ozempic. “I’m so freaked out by it,” she admits. In cardiac surgery, she has already seen the effects: delayed gastric emptying, anesthesia risks and canceled operations. “Being thin is so valued,” she says, “people would ignore that.”

She refuses that bargain. “I want the cheeseburger and the fries,” she says, smiling. “With the extra pickles.”

With all of this swirling—the extremes, the shortcuts, the noise—I ask Annika the question people actually want answered.

What truly works if you want to look genuinely good in 2026?

She doesn’t hesitate. “It’s going to be the tried and true,” she says. “Botox and microneedling. Hands down.”

Conservative Botox. Quarterly microneedling. Excellent skincare. Collagen support. Consistency over excess.

“If you did just that,” she adds, “you’d look fresh, rested, and unmistakably yourself well into your eighties.” She shrugs. “I could complicate it. But why?”

“I could complicate it. But why?” – Annika Barriteau

It’s not a trend forecast or a miracle protocol. It’s a maintenance philosophy — one designed to keep your face recognizable, expressive, and quietly strong.

Annika applies the same restraint to fillers. A skeptic long before backlash made it fashionable, she uses hyaluronic-acid fillers sparingly, most often in the nasolabial folds for gentle support. Full-face contouring holds no appeal. “The transition has to look natural,” she says.

During my visit, Annika performs a laser facial rejuvenation treatment — a quick, painless session she describes as “a happy laser.” The sensation is exactly as promised: warm, like sitting under a Caribbean sun. The technology gently heats the subdermal layer of the skin, stimulating collagen and elastin beneath the surface.

Fifteen minutes later, I leave visibly glowy, my skin calmer, brighter — a rosy, healthy flush that lingers rather than flashes. Days later, the effect remains; even my moisturizer seems to settle in better.

This is Annika’s version of luxury: efficient, effective, no drama.

Looking ahead, her goals for Haven are deceptively simple. “Regardless of what clients are coming in for,” she says, “I want them to leave feeling like they got value.” That value might be beautiful results. Or relaxation. Or simply a sense of calm. “This is a safe place,” she says. “That’s why it’s called Haven.”

“This is a safe place. That’s why it’s called Haven.” – Annika Barriteau

Off-duty, Annika is a devoted Rhinebeck foodie — chicken soup at Little Goat, Aba’s Falafel, Samuel’s Sweet Shop chocolates, long walks down Main Street with her kids when they’re home. Pleasure, she believes, is part of health.

Beauty, at Haven, is not about reinvention. It’s about maintenance. About repair. About resisting the pressure to scale yourself into something unrecognizable.

Or, as Annika might put it: softer. Better worn. Exactly right.

Photos courtesy of Haven Spa + La Lume Aesthetics and Sabrina Eberhard

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