Etiquette queen who turns Meghans into Middletons
In the blink of an eye, Harry’s fiancee has transformed herself into a princess-in-waiting. Now meet the . . .
Sitting at a table in new York’s Plaza hotel, i’m being taught how to use a knife and fork. i am 33, but it turns out i have been doing it wrong all my life.
instead of gripping them in my fist like a toothbrush, apparently i should hold them lightly between my thumb and middle finger and run my index finger along the top of each.
‘Scoot your hands back so you’re not holding them too far up,’ instructs Myka Meier, who is patiently advising me like a kindergarten teacher encouraging a small child with a crayon. i move my hands down the knife and fork. they wobble in the air. ‘Perfect,’ says Myka, beaming at me proudly.
Welcome to the Duchess Effect, a one-day course designed by Myka (rhymes with ‘biker’), an American etiquette expert who aims to transform her students into Kate Middleton. to make them more polished. More elegant. More sophisticated.
i was pretty confident before i went. Etiquette lessons? Ha! i
worked at ‘society bible’ Tatler for five years. I know the difference between an oyster fork and a fish fork. No Yank was going to teach me how to eat a banana, thank you very much.
Except within seconds of arriving at The Plaza, Myka says I’ve been making endless faux-pas. These include finishing everything on my plate, putting mustard in the wrong place and loading too much on my fork.
Crikey. Why are these wrong? Well, says Myka, I should always leave something on my plate to indicate to my host that I’m not still hungry. Sauces like mustard should be placed on the bottom right hand of my plate, whereas ‘discards’, like fish skin or fat rinds, should go in the top left area.
And when I spear a tiny bit of cake with my fork, a crumb so small it is almost invisible to the naked eye, Myka tells me it is ‘borderline’ too much for one mouthful. Too much? Myka, it wouldn’t fill a mouse!
I’m so anxious I start sweating into the expensive Catherine Walker dress I’ve brought to New York with me, since it’s Kate’s (ergo Myka’s) favourite label.
These rules are confusing to me, because the irony is that the truly posh don’t care about the minutiae of etiquette. They don’t give a fig whether you eat your Dover sole with a fork or your hands. Obsessing about how you hold a knife or putting your ketchup in the wrong place is deemed awfully middleclass by the very grand.
And yet, Myka tells me, this is exactly the kind of etiquette training Meghan Markle is currently undergoing to transform herself from foxy starlet into demure duchess before marrying Prince Harry in May.
‘She’s literally having training right now,’ says Myka.
I imagine poor Meghan sitting at a table, frowning down at an array of knives and forks like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman. According to Andrew Morton’s new biography, she practised tea- drinking at an English tea house in California before meeting the Queen. ‘Is she now having lessons every day?’ I ask.
‘It will be event-dependent,’ says Myka. ‘If she has a big event that week, someone will go through it with her beforehand.’
‘Who’s teaching her?’ I ask, wondering whom the palace deemed posh enough for the job. Nicky Haslam? Jacob Rees-Mogg? Myka shakes her head. ‘It’s internal aides. They don’t bring anyone in. They already have the best in the world.’ Myka should know. She was taught by a former member of the Royal household herself. ‘And they’ll be helping her family,’ she adds. ‘Think about it — her mother’s a yoga teacher coming to the wedding from California.’
THEREare 22 of us here for the Duchess Effect course, all women between 19 and 65, who have paid $599 (£426) a ticket. They are mostly from different states across America, although there’s an image consultant from Mexico and a Canadian called Marina who’s here because her husband is British and she wants to polish her manners. Plus two friends from Brazil who are big fans of Myka’s Instagram account. (She has more than 26,000 followers).
The course kicks off at 10am in The Plaza’s Palm Court restaurant where we learn how to hold a teacup properly. ‘ Pinkies in,’ instructs Myka, waggling her little finger. ‘When I lived in London the joke was you could spot an American a mile off because their pinkie would be out. So Ms Markle will have to learn to keep her pinkie in.’
Bingo. Three minutes in and we have the first mention of Meghan. There will be dozens more during the course, plus numerous slides of Meghan and Kate. Or ‘Ms Markle’ and ‘the Duchess’, as Myka calls them.
A distressed lady at a table behind me beckons Myka over. She’s worried she can’t hold her teacup the correct way — the handle pinched between forefinger and thumb — without spilling her tea.
Myka, in a bright yellow Karen Millen dress and nude LK Bennett heels (on which more later), hurries over. ‘I’ll show you a technique the Duchess uses, supporting her teacup with two fingers,’ she reassures her.
After tea, we shuffle through to an oak-panelled room for a two-hour morning session. Myka, 35, talks us through her background. A normal American girl, daughter of an IrishAmerican mother and a marine surveyor father, she grew up in Florida and went to university there before moving to work for a PR firm in London.
One day, at an event sponsored by one of her clients, Prince Charles made an appearance. There was a panic about who would