The Wing, the womenonly social club and coworking space that opened in New York in 2016, has been shut down by its parent company. For many professional women, the Wing, which grew to locations in San Francisco, Chicago and Los Angeles, came to represent a movement of empowerment after the election of Donald Trump.
“Against the backdrop of the Covid pandemic and growing global economic challenges, we have been unable to recover and grow to the level of active membership and event activity required to run a financially stable operation,” said a letter sent last night to wing members.
Some investors were notified yesterday that the company would be closed.
IWG, the Wing’s parent company, told members they could have access to IWG locations in the United States for use until the end of September. An IWG spokesman declined to comment and did not specify the size of the wing’s current membership.
Led by its mediasavvy founders, Audrey Gelman and Lauren Kassan, the Wing opened its first space in the Flatiron District, on the historic stretch known as the Ladies’ Mile where wealthy women shopped in the 19th century. The Wing ushered in the age of millennial pink furniture, just as millions of women across the country were crushed by Hillary Clinton’s defeat.
Ms. Gelman seized the moment and cultivated a waiting list of thousands of applicants by producing and publicizing events in the wing that captured women’s desire to channel their energy into the political and cultural advocacy that manage to be glamorous and lively. At its height, the wing was reported to have around 12,000 members, with 9,000 more on its waiting list.
All the while, the company promoted its efforts as virtuous and diversityconscious. “We really try to think about diversity not only in terms of who is actually in the space, but also in terms of how the space is being designed,” Ms. Gelman told Vox in 2019.
In cities across the country, the Wing came to represent a Trumpera, hardhitting, forprofit feminism.
From its earliest days, there were Wingsponsored field trips to the Women’s March on Washington. Starstudded seminars and panels such as “Workshop on Anxiety and Depression in a PostTrump World” and “A Conversation with Senator Kirsten Gillibrand” took place against the backdrop of Instagramfriendly decor of the Wing, colorcoded bookcases and conference rooms. lined with custom wallpaper and named after reallife and fictional feminists like Ida B. Wells and Jo March. Amid the activism, members could dust their noses with products from Chanel, a brand for which Ms. Gelman became an influencer.
For most people, joining the wing cost between $2,500 and $3,000 a year (a fee that didn’t cover grain bowls, pressed juice, and glutenfree cookies). Members include cultural and media tastemakers such as writer Tavi Gevinson, model Hari Nef and comedian Jessica Williams.
“The look of it is beyond my wildest dreams,” Ms. Gevinson told The New York Times in 2017. “It’s crazy that this place exists in real life. I was on board right away.”
That year, WeWork invested $28 million in the Wing. Ms. Gelman and Ms. Kassan personally received a substantial sum from that fundraising round, according to four people familiar with the terms of the deal.
Ms. Gelman declined to comment. Ms. Kassan did not respond to a request for comment.
By the end of 2019, the Wing had 11 locations and had raised more than $100 million from venture capitalists and celebrity investors like soccer star Megan Rapinoe.
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But as the company’s narrative of financial success grew, employees began to puncture its mystique, publicly revealing the schism between the company’s selfpromotion and the reality of its working conditions.
The Wing as a hotbed of socially conscious capitalism was “a total facade,” a former employee told The New York Times Magazine in March 2020. “It’s just like any other company that wants to make money.”
The pandemic hit the wing, as did most businesses that made revenue from bringing people together in a physical space. He laid off more than 300 people in the spring of 2020 and offered them a onetime stipend of $500 (which they had to apply for). Some employees said the checks never arrived and the company informed them it did not have sufficient funds.
But after the killing of George Floyd and the civil rights protests that followed, Wing alerted his hundreds of thousands of Instagram followers that he intended to donate $200,000 to causes associated with Black Lives Matter. “How do you have 200,000 for organizations when you have not yet paid many employees who applied for the employee relief fund?” asked one commenter on Instagram. “In particular, black and brown space staff who were making $16.50.”
Employee anger spilled over, and Ms. Kassan’s deputy chief of staff, a black woman who was also asked to work for Ms. Gelman after her assistant was fired, resigned. Some employees organized a virtual strike.
In midJune 2020, Ms Gelman resigned amid widespread internal criticism, retaining a 10% stake in the company. Ms. Kassan remained with the company, most recently as its CEO, Ms. Gelman, starting a specialty home goods store in Brooklyn and an ecommerce company.
In February 2021, IWG, the flexible office company, bought a majority stake in Wing.
Sheila Lirio Marcelo, the company’s new board chair, came and went in just over a year. (Ms. Marcelo resigned in June. He does not list his former wing affiliation on his Linkedin resume or current professional bio. She did not respond to requests for comment.)
“Wow,” he tweeted Jessica Blankenship, writer, editor and Wing member, after receiving the email about the closure. He added, “Not to be insensitive, but what’s going on with all the furniture.”