The Swell, the New Invitation-Only Club You Have to Be 40 to Join

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Pilar Guzmán, left, and Alisa Volkman, founders of The SwellAngela Pham/BFA.com

With all due respect to millennials and Gen Z’ers and their fair, youthful glow, there’s a whole population out there that’s tired of them hogging the conversation. Specifically, the midlife lot, many of whom feel that they’re in the prime of their lives, even more so than they were in their 20s and 30s. Two of them, Alisa Volkman and Pilar Guzmán, both former editors and journalists, are at work completely rebranding middle age as a club you want to be a part of. Literally.

The Swell is a new elite, invitation-only club where members ages 40 to 69 are part of a prestige network of accomplished peers from across various professionals—creative and otherwise. Membership includes access to salons, dinners, educational, scientific, and medical information about aging, as well as immersive experiences, all organized with goal of sharing and potentially resolving the issues unique to midlife. To a great extent, The Swell’s patrons are its most prized asset. Some of the charter members include Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), Christy Turlington Burns, Shari Redstone, Jill Kargman, John Derian, Cynthia Rowley, Taryn Toomey, Daniel Levitin ( author of Successful Aging), and Ingrid Fetell Lee (author of Joyful). The latter two are confirmed to host upcoming workshops for The Swell. (Yes, its a little like The Wing, but men are allowed.)

“There’s such bad and antiquated messaging around midlife,” says Volkman, over mint tea at The Odeon in Tribeca earlier this month, just before the coronavirus realities took hold across the country and, in particular, shut down almost all of New York. “AARP is still a market leader. Most people dread turning 40. There’s a huge market around weddings, then babies, then teenagers, then parenting. Then after parenting, it’s death.”

The idea for The Swell was inspired by Volkman and Guzmán’s personal experience and that of their peer group of ambitious, successful, high achievers who have found themselves in that proverbial white space between parenting and death. “There’s this notion of a value shift where everybody is sort of asking themselves the same question, which is, ‘Okay, wait a minute. Now that I’m facing empty nest or a shift in my marriage or my living situation…what am I doing? What does my life look like? What do I want it to look like?’” says Guzmán. “You don’t have the luxury of asking yourself those questions until this moment.”

Both women have experience mining their own lives for professional purposes. Guzmán was the founding editor of Cookie, the magazine for cool parents that Condé Nast launched in 2004 and shuttered in 2009. She went on to helm Condé Nast Traveler from 2013 to 2018. Volkman cofounded Babble, a website for cool parents, along with her husband, Rufus Griscom, in 2006, and sold it to Disney for roughly $40 million in 2011.

There are parallels between Cookie, Babble, and The Swell, a shared mission of breaking the dysmorphia surrounding specific stages of life. What was once, “No, you don’t have to be lame and go to Sandals and play with a life-size Elmo. You be who you are and have a cool vacation and we’ll show you how,” as Guzmán says, is now about dispelling the misconceptions surrounding menopause.

One thing that they’re not looking to replicate from their former publishing days is the advertising-driven business model. The Swell has an annual fee: Early invitation members pay $850, and the standard membership will be $1,250. (There is also a digital-only option for $450.) Everyone gets access to the talks, surprise packages, workshops, and master class curriculums, which are divided into quarterly topics, the first being “Unstuck.” A coronavirus-related update from Volkman states that they’ve built out their calendar of virtual and live gatherings “to fill a great need during this time for inspiration, connection, learnings, sanity, reassurance, and actual service.” (Virtual offerings include live Zoom sessions on cooking fish with Ignacio Mattos from Estela and a cocktail hour with Gillibrand.) For now, the operation is mostly coastal, with events and members mostly based (and currently housebound) in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco. There are also plans for products through collaborations and eventually The Swell’s own brand, and maybe even potential clubhouses.

“Is it a compound? Is it an artist colony? Is it a retreat center mixed with something else?,” says Volkman semi-jokingly. “Eventually, we want to design the next generation commune.”

“Actually, we’re going to create the next generation retirement community,” deadpans Guzmán.