Allbright has shut the doors to its Mayfair clubhouse, but it’s just one of many women-only members clubs to shut up shop. Anna Moloney speaks to the women who have attended and asks, do even they still want them?

In 2016, The Wing, a women’s-only private members club, opened in New York and it was heralded not only as a feminist utopia but as cool. Founding members included the likes of Cara Delevingne, Emily Weiss and Alexa Chung, while The Cut described its launch party – a “very adult sleepover” where high-powered women roamed in matching embroidered white pyjamas – as “a little like Instagram come to life”.

Within three years it had opened clubhouses in 11 locations, including one in Fitzrovia, and had become a part of a whole new ecosystem of exclusive women-only spaces, many of which tried their luck in London: Chief, Grace Belgravia, Marguerite and, of course, Allbright, which, opened in 2018 by powerhouse co-founders Debbie Woskow OBE (co-chair of the Invest in Women Taskforce) and Anna Jones (now Telegraph Media Group CEO), quickly became one of London’s most prominent members clubs for women.

Until it all came tumbling down.

The decline of women-only clubs

In 2022, facing a combination of financial troubles, eroded membership from Covid-19 and a workplace culture scandal, The Wing ceased operations. Its London clubhouse had already been closed in 2020 only 10 months after its launch.

Chief, a New York-founded private network for executive women, tried to fill the gap in 2023 with the launch of a London outpost, but hastily closed it again in March 2024, citing a poor reception from the UK market. In the meantime, Grace Belgravia and Marguerite both also shut up shop. And then, finally, Allbright, which entered administration for the second time in January.

Thanks to a bailout from Cain International, Allbright will continue to operate, but only as a skeleton of its former self. Its Maddox Street clubhouse has been permanently closed and its physical presence will now only take the form of a co-hosted lounge in Old Sessions House in Farringdon. Given the response of one Allbright loyalist – “15 minutes down the road? It’s not even 15 minutes if you’re a drone!” – the arrangement seems unlikely to keep members paying.

All the women looked the same, were often from similar industries and definitely mostly from higher social circles

The University Women’s Club, which, founded in 1883, represents a rather different wave of feminism, is now one of London’s only women’s clubs left standing. And all while the private members club industry as a whole has supposedly been booming.

So what went wrong?

The challenges of clubonomics

Well, first, it is important to acknowledge the challenges of clubonomics as a whole. Traditionally, such clubs were run as non-profit enterprises, owned and run by their members and thus primarily focused just on servicing them. Most modern........

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