The Washington PostDemocracy Dies in Darkness

The Wing, a co-working space and social club, invites D.C. women to No Man’s Land

‘We’re a coven’

By
April 11, 2018 at 5:09 p.m. EDT

Adapted from a story by The Washington Post’s Ellen McCarthy.

The Wing, a women-only co-working space and social club, is “not a sorority.”

“We’re a coven,” declares the Wing’s Instagram page.

Now, the Wing, which started in Manhattan, is inviting women in Washington, D.C., to be part of that coven. On Thursday, the Wing will open its Washington outpost in Georgetown, offering D.C. witches a glimpse of No Man’s Land.

For a fee, the Wing’s members, can hustle without breathing in the fumes of excessive testosterone.

Members will walk into a 10,000-square-foot space of soaring ceilings, skylights and sea-foam-green walls. There’s a cafe that sells eggs all day, a gallery of women’s art and a merchandise corner offering $17.50 keychains that say, “Girls doing whatever the [expletive] they want in 2018.” The air smells of fig-scented candles, the books are organized by color, fuchsia to aquamarine.

The Wing is meant to be a home away from home — just way nicer than any home most of you will ever own. There are almond milk lattes and velvet chairs, a beauty room fully-equipped with Chanel serums. The question is, will D.C. bite?

The women behind the Wing

The Wing was founded in Manhattan by Lauren Kassan and Audrey Gelman. Kassan, 30, is a veteran of the fitness start-up ClassPass. Gelman, also 30, is a former media person who worked on Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign and was the spokeswoman for New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer. She is also a New York media mainstay who caught the attention of magazine editors by mixing politics and high fashion. She’s one of Lena Dunham’s best friends and the inspiration behind the “Girls” character Marnie. Her 2016 wedding has its own slide show on the website of Vogue.

The Wing opened its first location in the Flatiron District of Manhattan in October 2016, three weeks before the presidential election. Part of their intention, Gelman says, was to celebrate “the golden age of women in power.” Then 300 members gathered to watch election returns and “the concept of the Wing went from something triumphant to something that felt more protective overnight,” Gelman says.

The women in her orbit “went from feeling fired up and ready to go to feeling frightened,” Gelman adds. “And wanting to seek out safe spaces.”

The Wing opened two additional spaces in New York last year and raised more than $40 million in funding. Its investors include the founders of founders of SoulCycle and a fellow office-sharing company, WeWork.

By all accounts, the Wing has been a smash in New York. During the day, it operates mostly as a co-working space where Wing members (who applied and were accepted and pay $2,350 a year) sit with laptops or lunch at the in-house cafe or take business meetings with other humans who identify as women. (Guests are allowed, but not the male-identifying sort.)

At night it transforms into a social hub — the bar opens, book clubs meet, speakers give talks. There are crafting events, volunteer projects, movie screenings. Big names such as Jennifer Lawrence, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) and Hillary Clinton have popped in for private Q&A sessions.

The Wing’s national expansion

Earlier this month, the Wing announced plans to open in six additional locations, including Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles and London. Washington marks the Wing’s first expansion outside New York, where the company is currently under investigation by the New York City Commission on Human Rights.

Last month, the commission confirmed it was investigating the Wing for possible discrimination because of its women-only policy. Gelman says they’re working with the city and have the support of the mayor. “It’s vital for women to carve out their own space and not have to shrink themselves to accommodate men and male energy,” she says.

After reports of the investigation came out, fans took to the Internet to back the Wing. Among those who tweeted their support: Amber Tamblyn, Roxane Gay, Monica Lewinsky and Joe Lockhart.

Lockhart, the former Clinton White House spokesman, is husband to Giovanna Gray Lockhart, the Wing’s director for civic engagement. (The couple first rented and then sold their Kalorama home to the Obamas when they moved to New York.) Giovanna Lockhart is helping to plan programming for the D.C. location. First up on the docket is a panel discussion of female reporters covering the Trump White House, then a sound bath meditation. Free blowouts from Glamsquad’s team of roving stylists will be offered on one of the first Saturdays.

“At the Wing, every aspect of a woman’s life — all of her interests, all of her pursuits — are treated equally,” says Lockhart, who previously served as an aide to Gillibrand and is the D.C. editor of Glamour magazine. “When I worked on the Hill and lived in Washington, I always felt like you had to sort of diminish those [more feminine] aspects in order to be taken seriously. And I think one of the great gifts that millennials have given us is, ‘No, you don’t have to diminish any aspect of yourself to be taken seriously.’”