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Last updated 22/10/2024

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In an article titled 'Notes Mondaine' in the issue of the French periodical 'Les Annales politiques et littéraires : revue populaire paraissant le dimanche' for 1st October 1892, the Baronne Staffe wrote, roughly translated: 'The serviettes are also folded to offer the appearance of a pair of slippers. Let us open a parenthesis here. Becoming ever more delicate, more refined, a large number of people would like to find a folded serviette as it came out of the hands of the laundress. It is unpleasant for them to think that this cloth that wipes their lips has been handled and reworked by a butler to give it a more or less amazing shape. The complicated folding of serviettes could only be accepted on the condition that the mistresses of the house or their daughters would take care of carrying out these works of art. This is done in America. The butler brings the snowy linen in baskets to the ladies of the house, and it is they who give him the aspect of a fan, an egret peacock, shoes, etc. But nothing beats the serviette as it comes out of the smoke cabinet.'

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