For weeks I've been hearing buzz about Aero 3, a new class down at the Aerospace fitness studio on West 13th Street. When I arrived recently to try it out, I bumped into my colorist, Marko, on his way from a personal training session to his chair at Sally Hershberger. "Is it your first Aero 3?" he asked. I nodded and he cackled sadistically before telling me my roots were showing and kissing me goodbye. "Good lu-uck!" he hollered as he swept out the door.

I headed into the studio unafraid—my regular training sessions at Complete Body on John Street and my weekly Nalini Method classes on the Upper West Side had me convinced I could withstand an hour of anything.

Turns out I could—but just barely. The warp-speed rotation of jump rope, boxing moves, maneuvers with a body bar and light handweights had everyone in the room moaning for mercy. And I had to stop from time to time to mop up the slippery pool of sweat around my feet. Later, in the locker room, toned veterans of the studio confirmed that Aero 3 is definitely the studio's its most challenging offering. The class's instructor, Aerospace co-founder Michael Olajide Jr, told me this was precisely his aim in developing Aero 3. "It burns crazy calories," says Olajides, a former boxer whose perfectly molded, impossibly lithe, spandex-encased physique at the front of the room (it's like having Spiderman for an aerobics instructor) is the best motivation for sticking it out.

"I didn't know there were any great, old, cool places like this in New York," marveled my step-daughter soon after we checked into the 139-year-old Mohonk Mountain House on a recent weekend. A teenage world traveler, she's seen Asia and Europe, but her first trip to the Shawagunk Mountains of upstate New York did not fail to impress.

With its winding hallways, creaky staircases and oak-panelled everything, the lodge reminded me of The Shining—that is, if The Shining had been a family comedy. Kids were everywhere in evidence, scampering through the halls, spending their parents' quarters in the game room and dressing up for dinner in the massive dining hall, where jackets are still required for men of all ages. We slept late, overate and played endless rounds of Scrabble and hearts in front of our room's crackling fireplace.

Mohonk has managed to make its spa, which opened just three years ago feel equally old-world. There's an outdoor hot tub, a sauna, steam rooms and sixteen treatment rooms where you can get treatments like warm stone massages and rosemary sage body exfoliations. While you wait for your appointment, you can relax in the spa's glass-enclosed veranda, surrounded by ancient trees. I now hear that Mohonk may soon offer outdoor treatments. Excellent. Now I have a work-related excuse to plan our next visit.

The idea of getting a Thai massage has always seemed unappealing to me. In a Thai massage, I was always led to believe, one's body is stretched mercilessly into all sorts of uncomfortable positions, and instead of the masseuse's long, swooping movements, there are individual applications of pressure up and down the body. Sounded like way too much work. But a recent trip to Thailand, where I sampled the treatment at Chiang Mai's Four Seasons and the spa at Phuket's Trisara resort, proved me wrong. Not only was the massage, a combination of exacting moves, yoga and physical therapy, oddly energizing, it actually made me feel like I had done a bit of exercise—a serious plus. Still, the real bonus for me was the discovery of Thai fisherman pants, the oversize one-size-fits-all cotton trousers that one wears during the massage. The sarong-pant hybrid makes more of a style statement than sweats, and is the ultimate after-hours uniform. I scooped up 10 pairs at a local handicraft store for 100 baht (about three dollars) each;  you can score a pair online for $22 at fisherpants.com.

Fisherman photo: APICHART WEERAWONG/APPhoto

Equinox has jumped on the earth-friendly bandwagon. They've gone "green" with their newest location at 10th Avenue and 17th Street. The furniture in the reception area is made from recycled wood and fabric (created by eco-friendly designers Marla Henderson and Tucker Robbins). The walls are coated with low VOC-level paints and one is covered floor-to-ceiling with plants. There are recycled rubber floors in the cardio and weight areas and bamboo floors in the yoga studio.  There's a state-of-the-art air filtration system in place. The housekeeping staff even uses eco-friendly cleaning products. When I talked to Paul Boardman, Equinox's chief design officer, he was quick to point out that that the company has actually been eco-aware for over ten years, occasionally using recycled and renewable resource products in its decor. Well, it certainly is a nice step forward. And I'm still eagerly awaiting the day when my 20 minutes on the elliptical will power that TV in front of me.

On an overcast wintry afternoon, the queen of natural makeup, Bobbi Brown, introduced her new Lip System to a packed room of beauty editors in her SoHo headquarters. "Some people tell you to match your lipstick to your skin color, some people say match it to your eyecolor, but they're both wrong," she announced. "You should always match it to your lips' natural color! That's why your friend can wear a lipstick that you love, then you put it on and it's totally wrong."

Brown's system, embodied by a Pantone-like color wheel, is simple: find your lips' naked shade, and the wheel offers four neutrals, four brights and four deep shades right for you. (The one color conspicuously absent from the system? Red. As Bobbi explained, "Nobody's natural lipcolor is red, so really, everyone can wear red. It's more about, do you want to wear red?")

Now, as a longtime beauty editor I do know my way around a lipstick counter, but I must admit, there is something reassuring about being told in no uncertain terms what does and does not work for me. Although I am naturally drawn to deeper shades like Bobbi's Blue Raspberry, according to the wheel (which hits Bobbi Brown counters in May) my lips are more compatible to her Crystal Pink. And when one of Bobbi's makeup artists applied it, I had to agree.

Mascara brushes have been expanding faster than J. Lo's belly. The concept of the extra-large wand isn't brand new (Benefit introduced Bad Gal Mascara in 2002 and Dior Beauté's Dior Show came out in 2004). But, recently, the steroidally-large brush, supposedly designed to bestow copious amounts of pigment to lashes, has spawned a slew of new mascaras, all with giant wands and in-your-face adjectives. In just the past few months, our mascara bin has been loaded up with a plethora of new lengtheners, among them Neutrogena Healthy Volume, Cargo Texas Lash, Stila Major Major Lash, Avon Super Shock and the biggest, by just a lash, Lorac Lotsa Lash. While standard mascara brushes are usually around 2 centimeters in length, all these new ones clock in at around 3 centimeters, and are proportionally fatter to boot. Of course, no one would ever fess-up to me-too motivation, but points must be given to Avon's Global Creative Color Director, Jillian Dempsey. When she recently introduced Super Shock to a small group of editors, she wagged the big new brush in the air and, laughed, "Watch out, Dior!"

Elle Woods would love theBalm founder Marissa Shipman. The 34-year-old San Francisco-based animal lover started her cosmetics company five years ago with birthday money she invested in the stock market and potions she cooked up in her kitchen. Though she's long been a self-described "gloss girl," this spring, she's adding lipsticks to the lineup. "I haven't had the desire to wear one until the last couple of months," she says. "But all of a sudden, I wanted a lipstick."

Dubbed "Read My Lips," the collection, packaged in newsprint-covered tubes, includes colors like Gossip (a sheer pink), Wanted (a wearable red) and Classified (a nude). "These are for girls who are up on their current events," she says. "They can hold a conversation but they can also go to a fabulous party and look great." Though we're not sure the lipsticks will inspire anyone to pick up The New York Times, we applaud the sentiment.   

Over the years, Calvin Klein has twice dabbled with selling makeup. The designer launched a short-lived color collection in the late 1970s and another in 2000. Now there's the new cK Calvin Klein Beauty collection, which debuted at select Macy's and Dillard's locations last fall and just rolled out in full force on Sephora.com.

The collection offers the wearable, muted eye, lip and cheek colors that one would expect from Calvin Klein, along with a few splashes of intense color (think yellow lids and fuchsia lips). But the offering that impressed us the most was the Delicious Light Glistening Lip Gloss in a sheer, brownish plum shade called Glory ($16). The line's global makeup artist, Mark Carrasquillo, told us it was one of his favorites too. "I wish all women's lips looked like that," he said. The idea behind the shade, he explained, was to make the lips look "kind of bruised, as if they've been making out all night."

Photo: Sebastian Piras

Anyone familiar with the particular charms of New York City knows a reservation can be hard to score in this town. Opentable.com helps diners avoid the dreaded 5:15 p.m. supper, and now, beauty addicts have their very own assist—lifebooker.com. The new site works like an online concierge, showing users what services are available in specific neighborhoods at specific times, and has lined up a small but impressive list of participating spas and salons, including The Townhouse Spa at the Chambers Hotel, Great Jones Spa in SoHo, Delluva Vinotherapy in TriBeCa and the Rita Hazan salon in Midtown. Best of all, your cubicle colleagues won't ever have to overhear you saying, "Hi, I'd like to make an appointment for a Brazilian bikini wax" again.

If the beauty sections of Whole Foods and Bergdorf Goodman had a love child, it would be Vert. The Venice, California-based beauty boutique, which opened in mid-October on Abbott Kinney Boulevard, carries practically every luxe eco-friendly beauty line we've ever heard of. Aesop, Jo Wood, Naturopathica, Stella McCartney, Red Flower? All here.

Designed in a minimalist style with modular bookshelves and an industrial-looking concrete floor, the shop has an open-jar policy, encouraging the curious to experiment. "It's like a big beauty playground," says owner Renata Helfman. Helfman, who shuns any products containing parabens, sodium lauryl sulfate or petrolatums, also prides herself on stocking the more obscure lines, like the ayurvedic-based Pratima skin products and Priti nail polishes (which contain no formaldehyde or toluene).

Since opening, the store has drawn a mix of traditional beauty consumers and hard-core "green" types. Vegan posterchild Alicia Silverstone even came in. "She's so knowledgeable about this stuff," gushes Helfman. "When she walked in, I felt like Ghandi had arrived."

Vertlosangeles.com