The golden age of private clubs: a symptom of class detachment?

Soho House, one of the most sought-after private clubs of the moment, will open its third location in Barcelona and its first in Madrid in 2025. The New York Times and Bloomberg have dubbed this era the golden age of the private club. Magazines and TikTok and Instagram accounts suggest which one you should subscribe to based on your profile. Are you more into quiet luxury, corporate luxury, or artistic luxury?

One might ask what this phenomenon tells us about today’s society. In a context of growing inequality, social distancing between classes and polarization, are these communities the result of a mere natural tendency of humans to find security in small groups?

It is possible that at this moment your memory brings you closer to an English-style salon, with cut crystal glasses and scotch which is drunk by a distinguished group of men, generally older, white, in suits and ties.

However, today, alongside the old clubs, many of which still survive adapted to the current context (most now accept women), there is a new cohort of spaces that remain locked – for members only – but are more diverse in terms of the profile of their members and the leisure services they offer: spas, swimming pools, gyms, luxury restaurants.

“CORE: [nombre del club] “It reimagines the tradition of private communities, overcoming the old model of regulations and dress codes and divisions by gender and class, and innovating an approach in which freedom, independence and happiness are the new center of gravity.” This is how this club advertises itself, which was born in 2005 and belongs, according to cultural journalist Emily Sundberg, to “the generation X of New York clubs”, which emerged long before the current wave and survived the 2008 crisis and the pandemic.

CORE —whose initiation fees range from $15,000 to $100,000 annually— boasts of creating “a global community” of culture-driven individuals who want to “change the world.”

“Community” is the slogan that recurs in the descriptions of these spaces and in the mouths of their members. A community — designed by an opaque committee that accepts and denies applications — open to anyone who can afford it. Tamás Dávid-Barrett, a scientist specializing in evolutionary behavior at the University of Oxford, says by phone that, after the deprivation of social contact during the pandemic, “we have seen many types of communities emerge: some call themselves communes, others clubs. Both are made up of a small number of people who know each other. Your friends are friends with each other and this creates security and stability.” In this sense, a pétanque group in Nantes and a private club in London would have similar functions and benefits, says Dávid-Barrett, “the difference is in social status.”

Frequented by celebrities, artists, businessmen and politicians, most of the spaces have strict rules against taking photos or disturbing other members. In other words, they are refuges for privacy.

Sébastien Chauvin, a sociologist and associate professor at the University of Lausanne (Switzerland), interviewed members of Parisian social clubs for a study on the global class consciousness of elites: “They told us that since the world is so mixed now, even in the context of wealth, they need a safe space where they can be themselves. They don’t experience these places as anachronistic or paradoxical in a world that has become different, they are actually using the fact that the world has evolved as the reason for these clubs to exist.”

This phenomenon reaches its extreme when members say enough to the expansion of their clubs. This is what has recently happened with Soho House, conceived in 1990s London as a meeting point for creative minds and which today has more than 45 “houses” around the world. Its rapid expansion, both in number of venues and members – some 200,000 people, according to the club’s website – has led to a rapid increase in the number of clubs and members. The Guardian—, which made some members nervous and last year it announced that it would no longer accept new annual subscriptions in its three main locations.

On the Instagram account Soho House Memes, one post celebrates: “They finally listened,” and a meme shows a red cap mimicking Donald Trump’s campaign slogan: “Make Soho House Exclusive Again.”

Long-term exclusivity is what these places offer compared to luxury restaurants, clubs and hotels. Matthew Bond, a researcher on the political behaviour of elites at London South Bank University, distances himself from the “conspiracy” idea that these spaces serve to plot political or economic actions – although he does not rule it out either – and emphasises the role of “renewing identities and cementing social positions”.

While the older, more established ones are based on maintaining multigenerational social capital, the new ones allow for the acquisition of individual social capital. “The increase in international mobility of the professional upper class means that spaces are needed where they can socialise and rebuild their status in the new city they have arrived in,” Chauvin explains in a telephone conversation.

Private clubs could constitute in this sense a “third space”, a term coined by sociologist Ray Oldenburg in the 1980s to define that intermediate place, between the first space – the home – and the second – work – where people meet informally. But do a public library and a private club have the same social value? Oldenburg specified in his work that the ideal third space should be inclusive without establishing formal criteria for membership.

Several studies on residential segregation show that cities offer fewer and fewer spaces for different people to meet. Daniel Sorando, co-author of First We Take Manhattan. The creative destruction of cities (Catarata 2016), says over the phone that “it is increasingly difficult to know the living conditions of others.” While in the past there we
re public meeting points for the confrontation of different ideas and lifestyles – village bars, squares – now “the lack of spaces for dialogue leads to echo chambers.”

The Círculo Ecuestre, which has been “serving Barcelona for 165 years”, is proud to have always been “a meeting point for Catalan society”. These clubs, of course, encourage connections between people, says Sorando: “The problem is that they guarantee, through mechanisms that are not strictly economic – although mediated by money – the reproduction of elites. A transfer of capital, which can be symbolic, cultural or social, requires trust, and these clubs guarantee it by turning their backs on the vast majority of urban society.”

It is impossible to be friends with 8.2 billion people. Dávid-Barrett points out that the supposed open-mindedness of our current society is just that – an assumption that actually goes against human nature: “People like to be part of communities. If anyone can come and go easily, the group breaks up because there is no stability in relationships.” For Bond, however, “saying that your worth is established by being a member of a social club goes against those individualistic ideas that are typically associated with meritocracy or democracy.”