Trying to join The Wing members’ club is a test of your feminist credentials. The application form asks prospective members to describe how they have ‘promoted or supported the advancement of women’, then to answer what they think is the ‘biggest challenge facing women today’.
These responses matter. Because not everyone who wants to be in the £1,836-a-year club will make it. After all, the waiting list in the US is 35,OOO women long.
Why bother? Well, because The Wing has, by all accounts, a lot for us to get bothered about. For a start, each one of its eight sites is an Instagrammer’s wet dream.
There’s the soft pastel palette (a whole lot of blush) offset by sharp chequered black and white floors. Then there’s the colour-coordinated books – all by female authors – artfully arranged on ceiling-high bookshelves. And there are egg chairs and ferns and flattering downlights that bathe everything in a soft, amniotic light.
Its founders, Audrey Gelman and Lauren Kassan, both 32, are similarly hypnotic. Gelman is a former politico who used to work for Hillary Clinton. She is also close friends with Lena Dunham, has a degree in political science and is one of the best-dressed women in Manhattan.
Kassan, meanwhile, is a cool New Yorker who helped launch SLT, one of Manhattan’s most successful boutique fitness studios, as well as building the wellness titan that is Classpass… all by the time she turned 29.
Together, they have built an empire worth $375 million (£307 million),* with fans including writer Tavi Gevinson and comedian Jessica Williams. Which is why The Wing’s arrival in London this autumn is set to generate the same level of excitement usually reserved for royal weddings.
Co-working spaces have become the phenomena of our time – a smart response to the freelance age. Whereas companies such as WeWork have offered a friendly home for those wanting to have a table for their laptop and a community to take the lonely chill off freelance working, The Wing offers something far more than that: it offers you a way of life. And, make no mistake, The Wing’s way of life is very seductive.
When the club opened in 2016 – in a bright penthouse in New York’s Flatiron district – the launch event was a starry all-women sleepover, with guests including founding members Natasha Lyonne, Jenna Lyons and Hari Nef, each in monogrammed silk pyjamas with matching eye masks embroidered with: ‘I am busy’. The Wing made headlines around the world and hasn’t stopped since.
The buzz paved the way for seven more sites across the US – from West Hollywood, with its private roof terrace adorned with cabana-lined loungers, to Brooklyn, which has its own podcast room. Gelman says members (‘Winglets’, of which there are currently 8,000) should get a ‘warm, fuzzy feeling’ when they walk in.‘Your throne away from home’ is the promise.
Another factor of its success: the ability to attract a crowd that is gloss, grit and edge in equal measure. Winglets are relatively young, with an average age of 34.
They have careers in diverse fields, including fashion, politics, technology and journalism. Most are as high on the glossiness factor (after all, the beauty rooms are stocked with Glossier and Chanel) as they are on ambition. Gelman is the purest embodiment of the Winglet: she has a ‘Let’s Go Mets’ inner-lip tattoo, regularly appears on the pages of US fashion magazines and was the spokesperson for New York’s Comptroller Scott Stringer when she was just 26.
That said, Gelman and Kassan have tried to keep the club’s appeal broad. ‘They’ve tried to make it mean a million different things,’ says Scarlett Curtis, 24, the editor of Feminists Don’t Wear Pink (And Other Lies) and original member no.49. ‘In New York, there was a woman who ran a knitting company who’d set up her desk with wool balls; there were mums with side hustles, and journalists, coders and people in tech. If there was any deciding factor, it’s more of a political stance. They are leftwing: very pro-diversity, pro-inclusivity. It’s very intersectional feminism.’
But, let’s be honest… one of The Wing’s most appealing factors is the networking. It has endorsements from Hillary Clinton and Gloria Steinem, and its in-house events programme has brought in Jennifer Lopez and congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. For many members, these events are the biggest draw.
‘I went to every event,’ says Phoebe McPherson, 25, who runs social media consultancy Honestly Though Social and used to be a Washington member, before she moved to San Francisco and signed up there. ‘A lot of events in DC are transactional: what can you do for me? The Wing wasn’t.”’
As the creative expertise behind The Wing’s growing empire, Gelman first spotted a gap in the market when she was working in public affairs in Washington, DC. She would often find herself having to change in a coffee shop bathroom. Her idea was to create a refuge ‘where women could go between meetings – to charge their phones, shower, send emails’.
After bringing Kassan on board, the concept morphed into clubs where women could work, expand their networks and be inspired at events, which might include a ‘F*ck Harvey Weinstein’ talk on Tuesday and a ‘Work Bravely: Asking for What You Want’ session on Thursday.
In the spaces they’ve created, female empowerment pervades everything. On the cafe’s menu, a freekeh and poached egg dish is called ‘Fork the Patriarchy’, and merchandise includes keychains proclaiming: ‘Girls doing whatever the f*ck they want in 2019’. But it goes beyond words. These are clubs built for women, by women (using female architects and builders), and partially funded by women: investors include Kerry Washington, the US women’s football team and Serena Williams.
Yet issues around diversity have dogged The Wing. The primary complaint is one of cost: that it is the physical manifestation of the ‘lean in’ branch of feminism of Sheryl Sandberg’s 2013 tome, a strand of empowerment that is accused of only benefiting privileged (mostly white) women.
Diedra Nelson, 38, the chief financial officer I speak to on the phone one busy Friday morning, defends the cost: ‘We think we are priced competitively. There is a tonne of value you get for that price.'
‘It’s the events, the networking opportunities we create, the beauty rooms.’ The Wing has tried to combat this criticism by creating a team devoted to diversity, and offering free year-long memberships to individuals working at non-profit organisations, in education and in social services. Every panel features people from different backgrounds, and the beauty rooms are stocked with products for all hair types.
It also has a more diverse senior staff than most companies. Nelson, the woman behind the $75 million (£61.4 million) investment secured by The Wing last December, is one of very few black female CFOs in the corporate world. Having joined the team 18 months ago from at-home beauty service Glamsquad, she’s businesslike and rarely gives interviews.
But New York members might spot her in one of the clubs, watching what she calls the ‘lightning in the bottle’ that the spaces create: ‘One of my favourite things to do is to just sit in a corner and watch everything happening: it’s so cool to see people brokering deals or setting up a company. I enjoy seeing it all come to life.’
Being a ‘no-go’ zone for men has proved to be a problem. In March 2018, The New York Human Rights Commission said it was investigating The Wing for a possible violation of the city’s laws regarding gender-based discrimination.
The Wing won the social media war with the #IStandWithTheWing hashtag, and the investigation now appears to be closed. An attorney known for representing himself, James Pietrangelo, also filed a $12 million (£9.8 million) lawsuit against The Wing, alleging its ‘illegal discrimination against men… was/is egregious’. The membership policy was changed earlier this year to allow access to all genders – but the company says this was not due to the lawsuit, but following conversations with trans and non-binary members.
The London site, its first overseas outpost, will be on Great Portland Street, in a five-storey Edwardian townhouse that was put on the market for £21 million last year. It will have millennial pink and forest-green interiors, custom-designed wallpaper and beauty stations laden with goodies.
Courtesy of The Wing
There will be a tearoom, an outside terrace for cocktails and a portrait room dedicated to women from British history. It will also have a mother’s room. In fact, one of the biggest interior hits for The Wing has been the clubs’ lactation rooms, which come with comfy armchairs and stylish wallpaper: ‘Everyone wants a pump room selfie,’ says Curtis.
So how will it fare in London? The capital already has a much-lauded women’s club in the form of AllBright, whose own membership list includes many of the celebrities, fashion types and serious-minded businesswomen The Wing will almost certainly go after.
However, AllBright co-founder Debbie Wosskow says they are not in direct competition, with AllBright focusing on creating business networks for working women: ‘Our offerings are so different… The Wing has a very politically activist viewpoint. At AllBright, we are more aspirational and focused on supporting women in their careers.’
‘London is a hard nut to crack. It’s not as open [as the US] – you can’t rush in,’ says Rohan Silva, who founded coworking space Second Home, which has locations in London, Lisbon and Los Angeles and is a favourite with the hipster crowd.
‘They are going to have to do a lot of work to combat scepticism,’ agrees Curtis. ‘But while The Wing will shape around London, it will also shape the members. It will create a space where English women can adopt the traits of American women: being positive about our achievements and what we’re proud of.’
Gelman is confident that London will embrace The Wing. ‘Our major business decisions, such as where to expand our spaces, are driven by feedback from our community,’ she says.
‘When we asked our community where else they’d like to see The Wing open, over and over again we kept hearing from the women of London. It is a city that has such a deep and recognisable history of institutions that have been created to work for powerful men, including membership clubs. We know that there’s a hunger to change that.’
This article appears in the October 2019 edition of ELLE UK. Subscribe here to make sure you never miss an issue.
2019-09-05 07:32:00Z
https://www.elle.com/uk/life-and-culture/a28853879/the-wing-london-members-club/
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