Charm academy: Switzerland’s last finishing school

The tension in the small room is mounting palpably. The women’s voices soften to a near-whisper. Anxiously, the hostess casts a wary final eye over the table and her eight guests. At her slightest nod, the white-gloved butler instructs the staff to start serving, and the mood lightens.

The ambassador’s residence? A presidential palace? Or just some stuffy corporate function suite? None of these. Welcome to the world of Institut Villa Pierrefeu, Switzerland’s last finishing school. The “hostess” is Madelaine Balogh, a perky 16-year-old from Ohio. Her “butler” is Yvonne, a 30-year-old Nigerian woman, who prefers not to give her surname. Both are facing the culmination of their course.

There was a time when Madelaine and Yvonne would have been among thousands, when the world’s wealthy sent their daughters to Switzerland to be “finished” at institutions such as Pierrefeu. Attendance was seen as a crucial step in completing a girl’s social education and eventually netting a husband. Across the Alps, predominantly in the French-speaking cantons around Lake Geneva, dozens of schools flourished to teach ladies the finer points of etiquette, flower-arranging and dressing the table – the subject of today’s examination.

Switzerland was favoured. Its central location meant daughters could be dropped off by parents on the Grand Tour of Europe. Clean air and beautiful scenery provided an invigorating environment; the multilingual culture gave a sense of the cosmopolitan; and the country’s renowned stability and security reassured anxious parents. Social skills were often honed alongside improving deportment or developing artistic talents. But somewhere along the way, the dream faded. By the 1960s, gender equality, women’s liberation and an emphasis on higher education for all prompted a decline. Institut Alpin Videmanette in Rougemont – where the future Princess Diana was a student – closed in 1991. Mon Fertile too is just a memory (Camilla Shand, now wife of Prince Charles, attended), as is Brillantmont, where the Maharani of Jaipur studied.

“Partly, it was a problem of succession. A lot of these schools were founded by families, but it was hard work, and there wasn’t always somebody to take over,” says Viviane Néri, principal at Pierrefeu.

In other cases, there were commercial pressures. Apart from declining demand, many schools sat on prime real estate, in beautiful villas with breathtaking views of lakes and mountains. Le Manoir, in Lausanne, gave way to what is now the international headquarters of Tetra Pak.

Inevitably, Pierrefeu has had to move with the times. Now reduced to a couple of villas in a spectacular setting above Montreux on Lake Geneva, it was created as an offshoot to the girls’ school founded by Néri’s mother in 1954.

After some years, it was felt the finishing section should be housed separately “in an appropriate location”, prompting the transfer to the current hillside site.

Néri has been in charge since 1972. Short, precise and immaculately presented, she started with just 12 students, offering six-month courses in cooking, sewing and table service. “The 1960s more or less killed off finishing schools, but then there was a revival in the 1990s. The Europeans were replaced by Latin Americans, then the Indians and Arabs, followed by the Japanese. One clientele replaced another.”

But survival has depended on adjusting the business model. In recent years, professional women have become a target. “We now have businesswomen and housewives alongside traditional gap-year students,” explains Néri. Recent students have included a lawyer from McKinsey whose job involved meeting people from all over the world, keen on training to boost her confidence. “We’ve tried increasingly to tailor our courses to demand. Clearly, something like cooking you can now get at a cordon bleu school at home, so we’ve focused more and more on international etiquette, diplomacy and protocol,” says Néri.

The wife of a top Indian businessman (whom Néri declines to name) was another attendee. “She always wanted to do something like this when she was younger, but had been forbidden by her parents. Now she has regular dealings with her husband’s international contacts, including entertaining at home, and wants to be sure she’s doing it right.”

Changes to the curriculum have accompanied greater flexibility on admissions; Pierrefeu no longer only takes well-heeled teenagers. No students below 18 are accepted, but the school has dropped any upper age limit – students on the day I attended included a young grandmother with her granddaughter. And Pierrefeu’s nationalities span the world; the summer course of 36 women I saw had people from 18 countries.

The once-landmark year-long finishing programme has similarly given way to a joint venture with Institut Surval Mont-Fleuri, a top girls’ boarding school – and a former rival – just down the road. Surval provides accommodation and the more academic curriculum, while Pierrefeu does the “finishing”.

In summer, however, Pierrefeu works on its own, offering a six-week programme that can be split into two modules of three weeks each. The overwhelming focus is on etiquette, both social and in business, but there is also room for more traditional courses on table service and “floral art”.

It is easy to be snide, if not outright dismissive. Students on the summer programme can gain a “first certificate” or a “higher certificate” in “international etiquette and protocol”; further courses can qualify one for a “diploma”. For those attending the full-year course, the “Institut Villa Pierrefeu higher certificate in finishing” awaits.

Such qualifications do not come cheap. The six-week residential diploma course costs SFr20,400 ($20,100). The certificate is slightly cheaper at SFr16,800, or half that for the three-week module. To prevent disappointment, reassures Pierrefeu’s brochure, “you can also take three or six weeks of the course for your enjoyment and without exams, but will then only receive an attestation of attendance”. Néri says people do fail, but the school tries to steer weaker students away from formal tests, while giving more borderline cases a second chance if possible. Over the years, she has developed her own textbooks too, because “there was just nothing suitable on the market”. Pierrefeu’s oeuvre includes five volumes on international etiquette, three cookbooks and a further tome about home management.

“Most of my friends had no clue. Some asked me whether it would be mostly learning to walk with a book on your head,” confides Madelaine, impressively articulate and confident for her young age. “There were also a lot of negative comments, with some people asking, for instance: do delinquent children attend?”

But easy as it may be to belittle, the students seem happy. The courses appear well prepared and taught, with a strong practical bent alongside history and theory. In a classroom in the villa used mainly for teaching, Irene Vargas de Huber, a former Pierrefeu student from Guatemala, instructs a group on travel safety. “What if you’re travelling on a train. Where do you put your suitcases?” she asks the roomful of attentive, youngish students, almost all quick to respond.

It is soon clear that this class stems from wealthy, probably cosmopolitan, backgrounds. Discussion turns to ideal clothing for long flights. “Remember, the way you look is how people are going to treat you. Fair or not: that’s how it is,” Vargas de Huber imparts. “I would travel wearing something smart that you could then change on the plane,” she advises, adding – to acknowledging nods from most present – that in first class or business, most airlines provide jump suits or pyjamas.

But Pierrefeu does not come over as a snob’s paradise. Néri stresses that, in the table-service practice, for example, students must take turns as “staff”, whether they like it or not. Has she ever had any trouble with women who cannot grasp pretending to be servants?

“It can happen. But once we’ve explained to them that, if you want to manage staff, if you want the respect of staff, you have to understand them, it usually works,” she says.

“You break down the barriers. You break down those prejudices,” adds Madelaine, drawing attention in particular to the dangers of insularity at home in the US. “It’s also been great that there’s such a variety of ages. If I had been with a bunch of teenagers, I’d have felt much more uncomfortable.”

The course has been hard work, she adds. “Contrary to what a lot of people may think, it’s difficult. Take the table-service exam. It didn’t really hit me until last night, when I was doing my flowers and everything was falling apart. This morning, it took me three hours just to get things right.” Tuition comprises 26 or 36 hours a week, depending on the course taken, with 45 separate tests and three practical exams.

Back in the dining room, the tension eases further with the incident-free arrival of the main course. (“We had a slight panic because of having to change the cutlery for dessert,” Yvonne, the “butler”, confides later.) Néri and I head off for our own, belated lunch and a final chat.

Anticipating the beef in oyster sauce that has already been served upstairs, and with my stomach rumbling, I fork one of the dumplings that were the starters on Madelaine’s exam menu. Reaching over to dip it into the spicy sauce bowl provided for the two of us, the very slightest frown of disapproval crosses Néri’s face. “Am I supposed to put the sauce on my plate first?” I ask. She beams.