French Glove Etiquette

“Women who don't wear gloves every time they go out tend to feel self-conscious on the few occasions that they wear them. Self-consciousness about your clothes and accessories is a real poise-destroyer. So, the first rule, if you would handle yourself gracefully when wearing gloves, is to make them a habit. Then you won't feel there's anything ‘different’ about yourself when you have them on.”– The Leather Glove Producers of France 

THE WEARING OF GLOVES 

Before me is a set of rules on glove wearing put out by The Leather Glove Producers of France with which I agree in most respects, but not all. Here is what they say about the wearing of gloves: 

“Women who don't wear gloves every time they go out tend to feel self-conscious on the few occasions that they wear them. Self-consciousness about your clothes and accessories is a real poise-destroyer. So, the first rule, if you would handle yourself gracefully when wearing gloves, is to make them a habit. Then you won't feel there's anything ‘different’ about yourself when you have them on.”

The other rules of glove etiquette are more formalized. 

When to keep them on: 

• Don't carry your gloves, wear them. Put them on before you leave the house, the restaurant table, or your seat at the theater. 

• Keep them on at a cocktail party or tea unless you are going to eat. 

• It's perfectly good etiquette to hold a glass or cup in a gloved hand. But it's bad etiquette to pick up food while wearing gloves. 

• The solution of many chic Frenchwomen is to remove one glove only at a cocktail party or tea. She holds the glove in her left hand or leaves it with her bag which she keeps near her. 

• Keep your gloves on to shake hands whether with a man or woman. 

• Keep them on while dancing. (This rule is not fixed. It is not considered bad form to take gloves off for dancing if you prefer to.) 

• Particularly important to brides: Keep your gloves on if you are in a receiving line.

When to take them off:

• Etiquette decrees that you must remove both gloves completely (even the long opera length) before sitting down to the table or helping yourself at a buffet. 

• Most of the women in this country find keeping their gloves on at cocktail parties is impractical because of the service of canapé’s. It is bad form to take canapé’s with, the gloves on. If you subscribe to the one-glove-off-and-one-glove-on system and want to take a canapé, you must take it with the ungloved hand. 

• Certainly, at a cocktail party in the suburbs or country areas, the woman who insists upon keeping her gloves on or even one glove on might seem pretentious. The best rule is: if the others have taken off their gloves, you do so, too. 

• In the matter of keeping on one's gloves when shaking hands, a woman removes them when shaking hands with a head of state or church. 

• In certain countries abroad, the right glove is removed by ladies for hand-shaking with either sex. Follow the custom of the country in which you find yourself. 

• Also, the climate of this country is vastly different from that of France. In our very hot sections it is unbearable for women to wear their gloves under all circumstances in public. It is quite proper for them to remove and hold or carry their gloves under certain conditions. 

• A woman might wear her gloves to a town meeting or to a flower show, then remove them and carry them during the proceedings for the sake of comfort and perhaps to make it easier to handle programs, pencils and so forth. – Amy Vanderbilt, 1958

🍽Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia