It used to be the sleepiest exercise in the land. You could perform it lying down in full hair and makeup. When I did a stint at Pilates about 15 years ago, I’d wedge my sessions between work and dinner, knowing I wouldn’t have to shower and patch myself together afterward. It was no sweat. As in, I didn’t sweat.
Doesn’t that sound calming? Well, kiss those days goodbye because now, Pilates is a blood sport.
Athletic, aspirational, exclusive, elite. All the fancy words. It’s the Chez Margaux, Zero Bond, Casa Cipriani, and San Vicente of exercise. Did I leave anything out? It’s inaccessible to just about everyone but the Haileys, Kendalls, Kaias, and Bellas. In short, because I love an analogy: It’s the Birkin bag of workouts.
Most of us wouldn’t even know how to gain admission to these new Pilates classes. That’s because the studios are small, some with just two or three reformer machines. They can be accessed only by a referral from an insider and cost between $65 for a six-person class and $500 for a private.
“It’s not like the golden gates or anything,” says Liana Levi, the owner of Forma Pilates, who may have been the first to bring the admission-by-referral workouts to New York from Los Angeles. “I just want to know I’m getting good, quality people,” she says. “I don’t want to have some random coming in because they want to see who’s next to them and take a photo. When you’ve got to jump through one or two hoops to get a referral to get in, it shows that you want to be there.”
If you’re paying $500 for a class, it stands to reason that you want to be there. That’s what Amy Nelms of Flatiron Pilates charges, a price that she believes reflects her 30 years of teaching. “I know it’s a lot, but I’m worth it,” she says. “I only work word-of-mouth because I only want serious students. … I don’t want any negative energy in here.”
The minute you walk into these studios, you know you’re breathing rarefied air. They’re tastefully decorated with flattering lighting and sometimes art on the walls. “It doesn’t feel like a gym,” says Chelsea DeLay, who owns Boa Pilates in the West Village, where Samira Nasr, Cass Bird, and Jenna Lyons are clients. “It feels soft with candles and little tables. I made sure the mirrors were backlit with vanity lights so we all look good.”
Marieva Malo compares her studio, The Way, on the Upper East Side, to her apartment. “Everything is quality,” she says, including her clients: Scarlett Johansson, Colin Jost, Deena Aljuhani Abdulaziz, Leandra Medine, and Rebekah McCabe. She welcomes people in, makes them a coffee, and offers them a Moon Juice.
You might be tempted to raid the bathrooms at these places, given their stockpile of serums from Chanel (The Way), Dr. Barbara Sturm (Forma), and Estée Lauder and Caudalie (Boa). “Do you need a snack? Do you need a Claritin? It feels very thoughtful,” says DeLay.
Malo was an instructor at Forma before opening her own place. “Forma claims to be luxury Pilates,” she says, revealing the tiniest drop of bad blood. “Forma can be Louis Vuitton, and I’m providing the bespoke [experience].”
While countless Pilates instructors and students post their workouts on TikTok, the small studios are instituting no-phone policies. “I will always be the one who’s like, Put your phone down. Why is that here?” says De Lay. “Some people don’t want to be in the background of an influencer’s video. They’re not wearing makeup. They don’t look cute. They’re there to sweat.” When she brought her method to Equinox, students, she says, “would walk out of class when someone would set up a tripod and they were in the background. They were like, I don’t want to be in that.”
The vibes at these referral-only spots can be “horrendous,” says one client, or “super friendly,” says Romy Soleimani, a makeup artist and 20-year Pilates devotee who found her home at Boa. At some places, “Everyone’s attitude is like, Are you good enough to be here?” another client tells me. “At the smaller studios, if you get in, then you’re worthy.” This attitude may have inspired a recent Saturday Night Live trailer for a movie called Pilates: “From the makers of Saw X and the marketing director for Alo comes a chilling new look at girl horror.”
You can sense a bit of tension among the owners. Levi initially hired many of the instructors who recently bolted to open their own places, many of them following the Forma playbook (snacks, fresh flowers, referral-only). “I’m happy to train, teach, and mentor,” says Levi. “I give so much. But with that, I expect a bit of integrity in return. I’ve had people walk out on me and, from one day to the next, open a space nearby and take everything they saw in my space and put it in theirs. It lacks creativity. Doing the copy-paste thing is a little disappointing. You have to pay your respects to the people who mentored you.... I want to keep my secret sauce as sacred as I can. Because it really does mean so much to me.”
The friction extends down to the sticky socks on the clients’ feet, according to one Pilates enthusiast who’s piked at The Way, Forma, New York Pilates, Flatiron Pilates, and Boa. Each studio has its own branded pair, but “If you wear socks from Tera, Boa, or The Way to Forma, that’s a problem. You can wear Forma socks to the other studios,” she tells me, as I reach for the Dramamine.
Most of these elite instructors say they want to escape the crazy acrobatics and the glow-in-the-dark nuttiness of today’s Pilates and return to the fundamentals of the practice. Joseph Pilates, who opened his first studio in New York City 99 years ago and called his method Contrology, was a stickler for proper form and posture, and his disciples ruled, sometimes literally, with a stick. These new followers just want a little more flow, some fresh spice, a modicum of style, and maybe a protein ball or two. Is that too much to ask?
No one’s apologizing for setting new standards. Georgia Wood Murphy has six reformers at Tera Pilates studio and says she has no interest in exclusivity. “I don’t want to be like one of those West Village restaurants that you can never get into and you give up.” But many of the others are perfectly happy as the workout equivalent of Torrisi.
DeLay is one. She has three reformers and doesn’t plan to change that. “Anything bigger and you compromise being able to touch everyone and being sure everyone is in the right form. I don’t want to scale. … I want to be the best in New York. And New Yorkers, our quality expectations are through the roof.”
You can get a stronger core and glutes of steel at any dingy gym. You can toss a mat on your living room rug and start crunching. But these exercisers are shelling out the big bucks for something more: to feel special, cared for, surrounded by beauty. “New York can be a very lonely place,” says DeLay. “People are always searching for community, whether it be at the restaurant clubs, the private member clubs, or the different studios.” Good luck getting in.
Linda Wells is the Editor at Air Mail Look
