Pretend to Be Fancy: A Field Guide to Style and Sophistication

Marston Pierce, founder of Marston Studios, an interior design company, debuts with a wry guide to modern-day etiquette. She argues that being “fancy” isn’t a matter of “how you look [or] how much money you have” but a way of valuing oneself and one’s peers highly. Applying that philosophy to multiple areas of life, she dispenses advice on entertaining without overspending, decorating one’s home elegantly, finding a personal style (quality’s more important than quantity, and readers can find secondhand designer pieces online or at thrift stores), and more generally treating friends, family, and service staff well. The guide is at its most useful when addressing etiquette for the modern age, including rules about phones at the dinner table (keep it in one’s pocket if at all possible, and never swipe on someone else’s phone unless they’ve specifically given permission). Along the way, Marston Pierce successfully reframes “fanciness” as more about measured self-improvement than hewing to social strictures. The result is a funny, self-aware update on Emily Post’s Etiquette. Illus. (May)