Like a thousand year old “IT Girl”, an imagination of the old England in New York created

In the Six Bells Countryside Inn, if I -and certainly after a gin cocktail -was convinced that it could almost be a pub in the Cotswolds.

It has deep red -padded banquets, exposed bars and a cozy wooden bar that was poured out of curled lampshades in subdued light (but unfortunately no beer products).

There are Kendal Mint Cakes in his eleven guest rooms, with the beds covered in Patchwork Quilts from West Dorset. The entire mood is a funny twee (therefore very British) with flowers, frills and hand -painted frescoes.

What this may be surprising is that the Six Bells is a hot opening in the rural city of Rosendale, two hours over the state of New York City. But what it really makes bizarre is that it emerged from Audrey Gelman’s imagination.

When you heard from Gelman, you will probably know you as a co -founder of The Wing. The chain of co-working rooms for women embodied a certain brand of “Girl Boss” feminism from 2016 with an aesthetics that defined millennials for the coming years.

It was a dizzying success that was once 365 million US dollars with a waiting list of 9,000 names. This means that the self-proclaimed “women’s utopia” was accused of being less than utopian for some employees. Gelman resigned as CEO in 2020, apologized and retired to a 68 hectare farmhouse in the state of New York.

But the fascination of the media for Gelman began long before, from her years as a political operator (she left college to work on Hilary Clinton’s offer in 2008 for democratic presidential nomination) to her camera in Girl.

The creator of the pioneering TV show, Lena Dunham, is a best friend of childhood and Gelman was the rumored inspiration for the highly controversial Marnie, “only successful”.

Although not a well -known name – unless you read the pages of New York Magazine – Apparently she has a main line in the zeitgeist. So what is behind the pivot point to the country kitsch?

We met in the bar of the six bells, where she spent most of the past two months to prepare for the start of the hotel. We drank fresh LambruscoI chat about how the sparkling red wine was back in fashion after years of exile, and I couldn’t help but believe that it was an entrepreneur himself in the middle of a reserved comeback for an entrepreneur.

I asked Gelman about her apparent Anglophilia and it turned out that this “Jewish girl from the Upper West Side” (her words) has a preference for British crime thrillers.

In fact, she can exchange notes on Agatha Christie adaptations (her favorite Joan Hickson as Miss Marple) and undertook a tour for a place in England Murderon which she visited Beckoncott Model Village and discovered the namesake of her brand.

The Six Bells, a 17th century pub, in Oxfordshire, shows some of the episodes of the series (Gelman can call it).

“There is a reason why you call [the genre cosy crime]”, She said.” The world is overwhelming and I wanted to create this kind of escapism that felt a bit of the secrets of the past. “

While she found stiring spiration in the design of this side of the pond – “Obviously British Maximum, pattern and eccentricity” – the six bells is not an urgent recovery of a certain time or a certain place.

The design is a mash-up of folk art, from American Gothic to William Morris.

And it works. In 2021, Gelman opened the six bells “Country Store” in Brooklyn’s chic Cobble Hill-Quiertel-es today sells many of the household goods that are available in the hotel.

Gelman prefers a term that was shaped by a friend-“Cottage Hardcore”-because instead of the “ultra-feminine woman in a nightgown in a meadow”, the hotel offers “something stranger, even a little scary”.

You and her son recently “discovered” a spirit in the basement of the building and you are now a research project to find out who is watching the hotel. “A good spirit,” said Gelman nearby near her son nearby.

Gelman’s mood is fully exhibited in the fictional background story that she created for the brand. Both business and the inn exist in the “civil community” of Barrows Grün, which is home to a whole occupation of characters such as Ursula Lumley “The Town Gossip” and Amalia Blackwood “The Paron Maid”. The village card is received on the hotel’s ceiling.

Each room plays a role in this tradition. Gable’s Hollow, where I stayed, was hidden on the third floor of the pretty federal building from the 19th century with its floral wallpaper and the lush Toffee-colored curtains, apparently “Barrows Grün in autumn, when the Maples turns, was inspired when the crop festivals are a little too sincerely in autumn.”

I learned this from a brochure that was waiting for me for the berry printing quilt of my four-youth king-king bed, which was accompanied by a “field leader” and take instructions to take my imagination with me because almost the entire hotel also shopping, from the Calico bed sets to the Sponge-Ware Ceramics, in which it was later served.

The gift shop offers other options for what is best referred to as a gentle trade in the form of diverse night topics, beeswax candles and protein facial soap rods (apparently once popular in Sweden).

Gelman described the process like Soho House, but backwards; She started goods and expanded into hospitality.

Gelman was also not a hand-off founder. In addition to “all kinds of unambiguous things such as heating and plumber”, she became “very pleasant with a truck” when she crossed the American middle west to search for the sale of antiques for antiques such as the many oil paintings that adorn the walls of the hotel.

This type of treasure hunt is in her bones after visiting her grandfather in Hudson Valley and being communicated with him for auctions and economy shops. She now lives in the barn that he built after she has fulfilled a lifelong dream of buying him back, just to find out that the owners had not sold his many plucked phoden.

Maybe that’s why the six bells work. Gelman has always had a nose for the thousand-year mood, and in these times of digital myopia, AI and the broken state of politics is what we want, a nostalgic and tactical fantasy country, which we can escape for a few days.

Tyler Wetherall traveled as a guest of the Six Bells Innthe double of 350 US dollars (£ 257).