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The Wing’s Working-Woman Aesthetic Has Moved to the Suburbs
Laetitia Gorra helped design the Wing, which defined an aesthetic for upwardly mobile women in the 2010s. Now she’s created a new, homier, co-working space.
In the 2010s, Laetitia Gorra helped define an aesthetic for working women in cities across the U.S. At the women’s-only co-working space the Wing, the interior designer developed corporate-chic interiors that brought color and texture to office furniture and conference rooms in urban locations. Now she’s aiming to do it again—but this time, for the post-pandemic work-from-homers who are used to carefully curated suburban houses.
In December, Gorra is opening a co-working space in Hastings-on-Hudson, a small village in Westchester County, New York, where she lives.
Gorra renovated and transformed a building on her property into The Studio, a “micro co-working space,” as she called it, which she said could accommodate up to 8 guests at a time. The space is accessed by referral only, where the daily rate will be $75, or $500 for a monthly membership. “It’s a common theme with entrepreneurial women in hybrid work,” she said. “We all have this same problem of needing to step away from home.”
Gorra is opening The Studio at a time when a slew of co-working space companies have found success by focusing on smaller rooms outside downtown neighborhoods. Among them is the company Industrious, which has 70 percent of its new co-working spaces outside business districts, compared with 30 percent before the pandemic. Another is co-working giant IWG, which also announced in August that it would open more spaces in the suburbs to capitalize on hybrid work.
Now that suburbs are a key destination for co-working spaces, Gorra has designed hers to feel homey. The design for The Studio resembles a tidy living room and highlights how much Gorra’s tastes have “grown up,” she said. There is no millennial pink in sight.
The walls are soft brown and the wooden floors were refinished with white paint. Furniture includes a long, black vintage table, antique wooden chairs and a bright orange sofa meant to bring a flash of color. A side room has a Pilates reformer, bathroom and shower, and Gorra said there would be a private phone booth installed there, too.
“I think people easily get distracted when you work from home. We wanted people to walk into the space and feel inspired and calm,” Gorra said. “We chose neutral colors and thought the pop of orange is quite soothing.”
Gorra said she didn’t intend to compete with bigger companies but that she saw the space as an option for women who didn’t want to commit to long-term agreements. She said she could envision expanding her idea to other towns.
She worked for the Wing from 2017 until mid-2020, filling spaces with Pepto-pink settees, terrazzo accents and books organized by color. She left at the beginning of the pandemic, when the co-working space shuttered because of Covid. The Wing closed indefinitely in 2022, citing an inability to recover financially, and after years of internal turmoil.
After she left the Wing, Gorra co-founded Roarke Design Studio, where she and her partner designed several offices. She also worked on the interiors of The Six Bells, a Brooklyn home-goods store owned by the Wing co-founder Audrey Gelman.
“Laetitia has a rare ability to turn something as stodgy as a corporate office into something transportive and magical,” Gelman wrote in an email. “I’ve worked with her on projects that range from hundreds of thousands of square feet, to a tiny shop in Brooklyn. She really brings the same prowess to spaces big and small.”
Gorra said the space had so far attracted members including a Google executive and a Pilates instructor. The actress Molly Ringwald is also a member and said she planned to use the space to finish her memoir.
“There is a different mindset to going someplace else that I find to be helpful,” Ringwald said. “There is always something to do to distract me at home. I never get the urge to vacuum more than when I sit down to write at home!”
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Business NewsNewsThe Wing’s Working-Woman Aesthetic Has Moved to the Suburbs
First Published:28 Nov 2023, 11:19 PM IST
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