About Olha — Modern Etiquette

I’m Olha — originally from Ukraine, now in California.

I found etiquette through Downton Abbey, the television series. Not the dresses — the way people carried themselves. There was a composure to it I recognised as something I wanted, and something I could learn.

So I learned it properly. I trained at Institut Villa Pierrefeu in Switzerland, the last traditional Swiss finishing school still operating, and studied with The English Manner and the Emma Dupont School of Etiquette in London.

What I found there wasn’t a set of rules for impressing people. It was the opposite.

Etiquette is about dignity — respecting yourself enough that respecting other people becomes natural. It isn’t performance, and it isn’t for a particular kind of person. It’s how you handle a work dinner, a first meeting, your partner’s family, the table you’re hosting at Christmas.

Nobody sits you down and explains why any of it exists, so most of us guess, and stay a little braced in rooms where we’d rather just be present.

That’s what I teach — the reasoning underneath the rules, so you stop memorising and start knowing.

Over two million people follow along, and I’d love to help you too.

If you’d like to start, the dining etiquette course covers it end to end: eleven lessons, filmed at the Ritz-Carlton in the Bay Area, from the moment you sit down to the moment the bill arrives.