Audrey Gelman—co-founder and ex-CEO of The Wing, the women-centric co-working space that defined the girlboss era and eventually shuttered during the pandemic amid accusations of a toxic work environment and an unpaid back rent lawsuit—is opening a hotel, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday. In 2022, Gelman launched a small home goods store in Brooklyn called The Six Bells, and the hotel, which is set to open its doors in the Hudson Valley next year, was conceived as an expansion of the store. For the past year, WSJ noted, Gelman has been using dollhouse furniture to build miniature rooms in order to illustrate her vision to the hotel’s designer. “Something that’s very unexplored is the space between luxury hospitality and theme hospitality,” she said. The hotel will mirror the aesthetic of The Six Bells, which Gelman built around a fictional English village named Barrow’s Green. Addressing the conditions surrounding the cessation of The Wing, which also included protests from employees who said they observed incidents of racism committed against the staff by members, Gelman said, “It’s something I took very seriously and have addressed in the past.”
Read it at The Wall Street Journal
