So, it’s over. Stop the clocks. Cut off the telephone. Prevent the hoards from nicking the pink pastel thrones. Notorious woman-centric members club and co-working space The Wing is dead.
Once billed by its co-founder and entrepreneurial it-girl Audrey Gelman as a “women’s utopia”, and “your throne away from home”, The Wing opened in 2016 to a flurry of fanfare and media attention. On the surface, the concept was simple: charge professional women between £170 and £240 a month for access to luxurious, maximalist, millennial-pink spaces where they could work, network, and eat poached egg dishes called “Fork the Patriarchy”. Its first outpost was located in New York’s Flatiron district, in the historic stretch known as Ladies’ Mile – it’s where well-off women shopped in the 19th century. Within weeks, it had found its place among the Lena Dunham-adjacent coterie of New York City, counting Alexa Chung, Tavi Gevinson, Emilia Clarke and Cara and Poppy Delevingne among its founding members. By the end of 2019, The Wing had 11 locations, including a five-storey townhouse in London’s Fitzrovia.
