Etiquette expert Tami Claytor ’94 teaches life’s finer points
Salad fork? Check. Dinner fork? Also check. But what do you do with that large dinner napkin?
Tami Claytor ’94 has a piece of advice: Don’t tuck it into your shirt. Instead, fold it in half, and place it on your lap, with the crease facing your waist. “This way, when you go to tap your mouth—tap, not rub,” Claytor emphasizes, “your dining partners do not see the dirty side of the napkin.”
Etiquette may be a lost art for many, but not Claytor. She’s made preserving these small but important social graces her life’s work. As the owner of Always Appropriate: Image and Etiquette Consulting in New York, Claytor helps clients project a sense of polish and elegance in their professional and personal dealings, oversees image makeovers, and teaches why niceties in conversation and behavior matter.
Claytor learned her earliest etiquette rules from her mother, Grace Gourdine, a former model. The duo launched Always Appropriate in 2000 when Tami moved back home to New York to care for Grace, who’d been diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a cancer of the plasma cells. Claytor had been giving etiquette workshops at schools and nonprofits for years as a side project and was excited to turn her passion into a full-time gig.
“If someone learns etiquette, they’re more confident in themselves, and they have higher self-esteem—particularly young people,” Claytor says. “When I work with high school and college students, I say, ‘I can’t cure cancer, but I can make the world a little nicer, just one person at a time.’”
Claytor describes etiquette as a learned skill rooted in thinking of others before oneself. All the rules, she says, build off that foundation, but they evolve or even slip within the changing culture. Some immutable rules: Wait your turn in line. Say “please” and “thank you.” And always remember to write a thank-you note.
A certified image consultant who studied at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, Claytor leans on the etiquette books that have guided her for decades—Amy Vanderbilt and Emily Post are long-trusted sources—but also relies on observations to keep rules current. She says teens and college students respond well to her etiquette lessons, which she offers with a candid and enthusiastic approach.
“I try to make it fun and very interactive with etiquette games. About a half-hour into it, the students are excited,” she says.
Though etiquette is rooted in being mindful of others, it doesn’t mean sacrificing boundaries.
“Just because you’re polite doesn’t mean you have to be a doormat,” Claytor says, “and I try to teach that as well. It’s OK to say ‘no,’ just be gentle in the way you respond to a request you can’t deliver.”
Claytor’s love of etiquette comes from a desire to connect with and help others, seeds her mother planted by enrolling Tami in finishing school at The Ophelia DeVore School of Charm, which taught young Black women how to present themselves with poise and confidence. The pair also traveled to 40 countries across five continents, starting when Claytor was 8 years old. Her mother believed that international travel should be accessible to all people, and routinely advocated for people with disabilities.
“She would meet with diplomats, ambassadors, various heads of state, and tried to negotiate how to get handicapped people abroad,” recalls Claytor, who served as her mother’s apprentice on those trips. “She wanted to make sure that I knew proper etiquette when meeting with these government officials. She taught me about acceptance and made sure I understood the cultures while we were abroad, not just the tourist sights.”
The two bonded over trips to Tahiti, Egypt, the Galapagos Islands, and South Africa. They spent a summer touring Asia, with stops in Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand. On each trip, Claytor’s mother showed her that if you speak to someone long enough, you’ll find commonalities, no matter the corner of the globe.
These lessons in kindness and culture set the table for Always Appropriate, which they built together until Gourdine’s death in 2020. Today, Claytor continues to adjust to life and business without her mother’s partnership and guidance, and frets that etiquette will become a casualty to a sense of individualism dominating American culture.
“I am a little concerned that people are really focused inward versus outward, and that as we continue along this path, people will get further and further away from etiquette,” she says.
Claytor regularly observes a society that seems always to be in a rush and encourages everyone to take a breath. Elegance is not hurried, she insists, and proper etiquette provides us the tools to move through the world confidently and thoughtfully—and always wielding the appropriate fork.
