The Duchess of Decorum’ Pattie Ehsaei has some blunt advice for young people, who, like her, didn’t learn etiquette growing up
Pattie Ehsaei found it difficult to understand her adopted country’s etiquette when she moved to the U.S. from Iran as a 7 year-old. Now she is known as the Duchess of Etiquette to nearly one million TikTok followers. Photo by Mahmoud Hayat
by Jake Safane
Pattie Ehsaei is “The Duchess of Decorum” to her nearly one million TikTok followers. Her short videos on the world’s most popular internet site offer followers – primarily young women half her age – “knowledge you don’t get in college,” she said.
The videos begin with assertive, unambiguous advice:
“A woman should never change her name when she gets married.”
“If a dude asks you out on a date and doesn’t pay the full bill, that should be the last time you see the fool.”
“I don’t care how rich your man is…. make you own money.”
“Make sure your put something in the subject line of every single email.”
“What not to say to your boss: It’s not fair.”
“People come out of school, and they have no idea how to apply for a job, how to act in an interview, how to act at work,” she said. “They have no idea what proper table manners are.”
“I had to learn the hard way,” she said. “I lacked the skills everybody around me seemed to have. I started my TikTok site because I didn’t want kids to suffer like I did.”
Ehsaei’s experience as a young immigrant has also motivated her to volunteer for a variety of youth programs. On Saturday, March 12, she will emcee the Montemalaga Elementary School Major Donor and FUndraising Event at La Venta Inn, hosted by the Montemalaga Parent Teacher Association.
Ehsaei was 7, in 1978, when her family immigrated from Iran to Beaumont, Texas.
“I didn’t speak a word of English. I was dyslexic. I was the weird foreign girl. And my parents didn’t have a lot of money,” she said.
She paid her way through Loyola Law School in Chicago by working at a law firm, and holding down two waitress jobs.
“That was the first time I was really around rich people. Everyone seemed to know what they were doing except me,” she said.
She checked out library books on etiquette and practiced at home.
While still in law school, Ehsaei lost both her parents, leaving her to take care of her younger brother.
(Today, her younger brother, Amir, is a Special Agent with the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force. Most recently, he was assigned to security at the Rams/Bengals Super Bowl game.)
Ehsaei served as an Assistant District Attorney for Cook County for five years, and then moved to California and into finance. Today, she is a vice president of mergers and acquisitions at First Bank in Beverly Hills.
“I share my struggles because they made me who I am today. My struggles, and your struggles are there to teach you a lesson. They’re there to build your character,” she said.
Photo by Joel Whitley
The Duchess of Decorum grew out of Ehsaei’s volunteer work with Big Brothers Big Sisters. When the pandemic hit, in-person volunteering shut down, so she wasn’t able to mentor kids in person. That prompted her to start making instructional YouTube videos.
“I was getting like 25 views on a good day,” she said.
She realized, however, that the content wasn’t the problem. It was the length. Rather than making five-minute YouTube videos, she shifted her platform to TikTok where she could make one-minute clips.
In 2020, with editing help from her fiance’s niece, Ehsaei’s TikTok channel began attracting hundreds of thousands of followers. Some videos have received over one million views.
“Everything I talk about, I’ve basically done, and I’ve screwed up,” she said. “I learned from my mistakes, and I want to teach others so they don’t have to make the same mistakes.”
Etiquette exists for practical reasons, Ehsaei said.
“When they say that everything is supposed to be passed counter-clockwise at a table, the reason is, if everyone’s passing in different directions, you’re going to crash into one another. Etiquette creates order in the world.”
Some etiquette rules are relative, she acknowledged. Because younger people tend to be more casual at work, she advises taking cues from what colleagues wear, rather than applying one set of wardrobe guidelines for all workplaces.
Ehsaei hopes to expand the Duchess of Decorum’s reach with a book she is writing, and a TV show modeled after Anthony Bourdain’s food show “Parts Unknown,” but with etiquette throughout the world as its theme.
“I want the Duchess of Decorum to be the go-to place for people who want to get a leg up in life,” she said. “It’s never been about the number of likes. When doing videos, I always keep in mind, is this valuable information that at least one person would want to know?” PEN
Top 5 etiquette tips that most people don’t know
- Wait to eat until everyone at the table is served
Sharing a meal isn’t just about eating as quickly as possible; it’s about sharing a moment with others at the table.
- Pass the salt and pepper together
Passing them together makes it easier to find them when the next person asks.
- Don’t clink glasses when making a toast
Just raise your glass, because making noise with glasses or dinnerware is distracting.
4, Don’t drink from your glass when a toast is made in your honor
Taking a sip in this situation means celebrating yourself, which is seen as braggadocious.
- Take a gift for the host/hostess when visiting their home
A gift should always be taken as a way of showing your gratitude for having been invited. Pen