Myka Meier Is Here To Answer All Your Etiquette Questions

To hear Myka Meier tell it, she’s reliably the least popular person at a dinner party. If you ask anyone else, she’s the gravitational center. “Magnetic,” says Ariana Swerdlin, a friend and former collaborator of Meier’s. “She’s engaging, she’s approachable. She makes you feel safe and comfortable.” Her brother, Dr. Shane Volney, is regularly in awe of her social prowess: “She is incredibly charming. She is charismatic,” he says. “She walks in a room, and somehow she finds ways to make everyone feel a little bit better.”

The secret to her winning affect, and the reason for her professed unpopularity? Myka Meier is an etiquette expert.

The 41-year-old is the founder of Beaumont Etiquette and The Plaza Hotel Finishing Program, the author of two books, and the go-to expert for her 610,000 followers on Instagram and 214,000 on TikTok. (Recent videos include how-to’s on proper burger eating and cocktail glass holding.) She graduated from a Swiss finishing school attended by European royalty and international heiresses, has served King Charles a gin and tonic, and helped prepare some guests for his coronation this past spring.

During our two-hour lunch at Chelsea’s Cookshop, she meticulously tap dances around the myriad NDAs she’s signed — for her famous clients, the Fortune 500 companies she works with, the list goes on.

If this sounds very upper crust, Meier insists there’s nothing elite about her profession. “It’s just about respecting other people, and kindness,” she says, over a bite of a grain salad. “That’s it.”

Since pandemic lockdowns began to ease and people reentered public life, it seems nobody knows how to act in public anymore. Fights break out on planes; people are taking calls in movie theaters; somebody threw a phone at Bebe Rexha so hard she required stitches. Meanwhile, even well-meaning, non-phone-throwing individuals are struggling to stay on top of changing social mores, prompting publications like New York Magazine to propose “The New Rules” (“You may callously cancel almost any plans up until 2 p.m.”; “You can eat anything at your desk in an open-plan office”).

But even the best efforts at codification fall short, devolving into pitched debates in the New York Times’ comment section. Clearly, people are casting about for someone, anyone, to offer clarity. Someone like Meier.

Meier grew up in a modest home in Sarasota, Florida, the child of a white American mother and a Barbadian father. “The little girls — everybody was the same, and I was the one that had the Caribbean dad with the big voice,” she says. Growing up, her father taught her the value of kindness and always suggested playing with the lonely-looking girl in the corner. “We didn’t have much, but we had manners,” she says.

Fast-forward through her adolescence, her hard-partying years at University of Florida, to her mid-20s: She’s living in London, working a high-powered public relations job, and dating the Swiss man who would become her husband. “[He] was like, ‘You need an etiquette class. You are sitting here at these nice restaurants, hosting Mickey Drexler of J.Crew, and Jenna Lyons, and you don’t even know which fork to pick up,’” Meier says. She agreed, and after one class, she was hooked. “Whenever we would get our paychecks, everybody would run to H&M,” she says. “I would save up for my next etiquette class.”

She started spreading the gospel early on: that etiquette isn’t what you think it is. Her brother remembers first hearing it during one of their regular phone calls. “You’d never know you could make this a nonsnobby, all-encompassing way for everybody to learn how to give respect,” he says.

Whether it be high tea with the royals or a backyard picnic in Brooklyn, in her eyes, the key to good etiquette is having the tools to succeed in any situation. And of the enmeshment of etiquette with royal traditions? Well, the Windsors, she gushes, are the model of kindness. “They’re really sweet people,” she says. For example, “Camilla is the funniest person in the room. She’s amazing. She’s really a little bit silly even. And if you’ve made a quote-unquote ‘mistake,’ she will never let you know.”

Everybody can have social grace. After all, she points out, if a onetime “wild child” from Florida can do it, why not you?

It’s a brilliant trick, really. By coating European table manners in a sheen of American self-reliance, she’s managed to slip them through customs. But not everyone is as effusive — about the royals, or etiquette. Many decry it as an exclusionary tool wielded by the wealthy, since no matter how hard you pull on your bootstraps, there’ll be a limit to your success if you can’t pass among the aristocracy. (Not that Meier herself is selling her services that way — if you ask her, the aristocracy are showing poor decorum if they judge your poor spaghetti handling.)

In etiquette circles, she’s equally controversial. At Beaumont in 2023, rules are genderless, pronouns are obliged, and compassion is a guiding light. “The amount of hate that I get [about that] from people saying, ‘That’s ridiculous, you’re crazy, you’re trying to ruin culture,’” she says, sighing. If the rules aren’t kept in tune with social shifts, Meier says, they’ll die.

Criticisms aside, her success shows that the broader American public is interested in her approach. And her goal is to reach as broad an audience as possible.

When I volunteer, I promise I don’t have a gold headband on. I want to be relatable.

Since Meier is among the generation that gained social media in adulthood, her online persona is exclusively well-manicured and almost permanently headbanded. The consistency makes for a strong brand, one that’s earned her a loyal following, especially among women in their 20s and early 30s; according to Beaumont, 44% of Meier’s TikTok audience is aged 25 to 34.

Swerdlin, who worked as The Plaza’s public relations director for three years, says the predominant demographic for its etiquette events was 22 to 32 during her time there. “They were trying to enhance their professional skills,” Swerdlin explains. To this set, Meier proved both relatable and aspirational — close enough in age so as to meet them on their level but old enough to have realized the dream of having it all: the career, the husband, the two smiling kids.

But she doesn’t profess to be perfect, even if she can come off that way. “When I volunteer, I promise I don’t have a gold headband on. I want to be relatable,” she says. “I’m like, ‘What do you all care about? Here’s some of the things I teach. What do you think is going to be most helpful for you?’” And after revealing that ribs are technically best eaten with a fork and knife, she reminds those attending her gratis sessions to defer to the hosts, as she reminds all of her students. If they’re picking up ribs with their hands, it’d be rude not to do the same.

She’s not naive, and knows that not everyone is interested in learning. In college at the University of Florida, a boyfriend dumped her when he learned about her Barbadian heritage, saying his family wouldn’t approve.

“Judgment is the opposite of etiquette,” she says. “The amount of people who don’t know my heritage, and I hear racist jokes,” she says. “And I’m not silent about that in any way, never have been.”

Expressing support for racial equity shouldn’t be controversial, Meier says — nor should championing LGBTQ+ rights or gender equality. “I’m not getting political here, people; I’m talking about basic human rights,” she says. (Even so, her post amid the George Floyd protests was anything but incendiary: no #BLM, no black square, but a photo of a friend’s baby’s foot paired with a caption reading “I pray he grows up knowing he can be anything and that he is loved, appreciated and has no fears about his skin color having a thing to do with his future.”)

Surprisingly, the bulk of her company’s income isn’t from the demo Meier targets online. It comes from corporate clients: Companies like Fendi contract Beaumont to school their salespeople in the art of good manners; a bank that does business in China had its employees taught the ins and outs of Chinese etiquette; another company hired Beaumont to facilitate DEI sessions. (Following #MeToo, Beaumont began offering instruction in professional, respectful workplaces.)

“A lot of HR teams say ‘Our teams are afraid to compliment each other. They’re afraid to invite a colleague to their house on the weekend,’” says Meier, who’ll explain where the line is, say, between a kind compliment and an inappropriate one. And she reminds everyone that etiquette is “genderless,” in her words.

“When #MeToo really started, women felt invincible,” she says, pointing to a recent case where a woman in England sued her boss for including the letters “xx” in an email, saying the abbreviation meant kisses. (Her claims were rejected by a London court.) Sometimes, Meier says, “People are just out to get other people.”

Say what you will about her, but she’s not out to get anyone. That would be unkind, and she takes etiquette’s prescription for kindness far more seriously than its prohibition on slouching or arcane silverware rules.

Of course, it helps to know how to put your best foot forward. Just ask Swerdlin, who consulted Meier on how to impress her then-boyfriend’s parents, whom she was meeting. “She said, ‘Send flowers in a vase the day before you get there with a short note that just says “Looking forward to meeting you,”’” she says. “And for the three years I was in that relationship, his mother kept the flowers in her dining room. They dried out, but they were still in the same vase. She thought it was the epitome of class.”

At the end of our meal, I, too, glimpse the epitome of class. When it comes time for the check, the waiter simply lays a receipt on the table; somehow, Meier had given him her card before we even said hello.

He smiles at my shock and consoles me: “You didn’t have a chance.”