It's the first morning of butler school in London, and I'm flanked by eleven classmates who paid $2,700 for the privilege of learning to be servants. We've convened in a conference room at the London headquarters of Bespoke Bureau, the elite staffing agency that runs the school. Compared with the royal grandeur just outside—a medieval stone courtyard where the lord mayor's coronation carriage is on display—the office space itself is more Dunder Mifflin bland, perhaps a first taste of the upstairs-downstairs dynamic to come. We're soon joined by instructor Steve Ford, 47, a sturdily built Welsh butler charged with teaching us formal table service, etiquette, and household management.
Ford gives each of us a good once-over, making sure we look the butler part: neat hair, clipped nails, no visible tattoos or jewelry other than wedding rings, even on the women. (Genderwise, our class is split fifty-fifty.) He checks our shoes, which, he says, should be "polished, enough that you can shave in them, but never outshine your boss's." Then he passes out our uniforms for the week—black ties and white shirts over black trousers—and orders us each to take a turn at an ironing board set up in the center of the room, introducing ourselves as we press the wrinkles from our duds. (Or in my case, replace them with fresher wrinkles.)
My fellow trainees range in age from 25 to 49 and include a stewardess on the yacht of an American cosmetics billionaire, a Singaporean hotel manager, and a British-army sniper formerly stationed in Afghanistan who once worked as the concierge at a five-star hotel. All have previous experience in the high-end-service sector. Meanwhile I can't tell you if the dinner fork goes to the left or the right of the soufflé fork. Or do you eat soufflé with a spoon?
Lucky for me, my livelihood won't depend on knowing the answer (spoon). I'm here doing research, part of a larger mission to learn the truths of being a butler, a vocation that's booming. For that, you can thank our New Gilded Age, with a wealth gap that's become a yawning chasm. There are currently more millionaires worldwide than ever—the total jumped by 10 percent in 2012 alone—which means a huge demand for those who serve the super-rich, like the butler. The Russian oligarchs, Middle Eastern oil barons, and Asian moguls buying up expensive real estate in and around London are also exporting the Euro-aristocratic lifestyle back home. Thirty-five years ago, there were only a few hundred butlers left in Britain; today there are roughly 10,000, plus thousands more abroad, including the fastest-growing butler market of them all, China. "For the Chinese, it's a status thing," says Sara Vestin Rahmini, who founded Bespoke Bureau. "They're like, 'Just send us somebody who looks British, wholooks European.' "
China now has over 1 million millionaires, with 90,000 minted just in 2012. Gary Williams, a London-based staffing agent who himself was a butler for fifteen years, credits much of China' s butler demand to Downton Abbey. Watched by millions of Chinese, it's one of the biggest British TV imports ever. The show is more than just a soapy diversion, he says; it's a guidebook for living in a stratified society. "The Chinese aren't even really sure what a British butler should do," says Williams. "It will take them ten to fifteen years to really understand that."
But they'll pay—and pay well—to find out. A new butler willing to go east, to Shanghai or Dubai or anywhere else suffering an Anglo-servant shortage, can start at $60,000 a year and run his employer's estate from the start. In the West, where standards are higher and the competition more fierce, a rookie typically apprentices for a few years and earns a starting salary of maybe $40,000. A butler in either market should hit six figures within five to six years—sooner if he learns a few dirty secrets or gets poached by one of his boss's billionaire friends.
So the money is respectable and the demand is high. Yet buttling—which is the very ludicrous, very real verb for what butlers do—obviously isn't a career that one takes on lightly. I couldn't help but wonder: Who wants to become a butler? There are easier ways to make a living that don't entail all-consuming servitude. So I tracked down butlers from Shanghai to Los Angeles, and even enrolled in butler school, in an effort to peek behind the velvet curtain.
What I saw was the intense, sometimes thankless existence I suspected. A butler supervises his boss's household staff, oversees his meals and entertainment, and attends to his every whim and desire. He must be equal parts concierge and Michael Clayton-esque fixer. In that sense, the basic job requirements haven't changed much in a hundred years. What has changed: the boss. Forget about the dainty lord ringing for his cup of tea. The butlers of today serve paranoid money managers, manor-owning supermodels, Chinese celebrities, and horny sheiks. And they all have stories—horrible, hilarious, sometimes hooker-fueled stories—that they never get to tell, because nobody talks to the butler. Until now.
Ford gives each of us a good once-over, making sure we look the butler part: neat hair, clipped nails, no visible tattoos or jewelry other than wedding rings, even on the women. (Genderwise, our class is split fifty-fifty.) He checks our shoes, which, he says, should be "polished, enough that you can shave in them, but never outshine your boss's." Then he passes out our uniforms for the week—black ties and white shirts over black trousers—and orders us each to take a turn at an ironing board set up in the center of the room, introducing ourselves as we press the wrinkles from our duds. (Or in my case, replace them with fresher wrinkles.)My fellow trainees range in age from 25 to 49 and include a stewardess on the yacht of an American cosmetics billionaire, a Singaporean hotel manager, and a British-army sniper formerly stationed in Afghanistan who once worked as the concierge at a five-star hotel. All have previous experience in the high-end-service sector. Meanwhile I can't tell you if the dinner fork goes to the left or the right of the soufflĂ© fork. Or do you eat soufflĂ© with a spoon?
Lucky for me, my livelihood won't depend on knowing the answer (spoon). I'm here doing research, part of a larger mission to learn the truths of being a butler, a vocation that's booming. For that, you can thank our New Gilded Age, with a wealth gap that's become a yawning chasm. There are currently more millionaires worldwide than ever—the total jumped by 10 percent in 2012 alone—which means a huge demand for those who serve the super-rich, like the butler. The Russian oligarchs, Middle Eastern oil barons, and Asian moguls buying up expensive real estate in and around London are also exporting the Euro-aristocratic lifestyle back home. Thirty-five years ago, there were only a few hundred butlers left in Britain; today there are roughly 10,000, plus thousands more abroad, including the fastest-growing butler market of them all, China. "For the Chinese, it's a status thing," says Sara Vestin Rahmini, who founded Bespoke Bureau. "They're like, 'Just send us somebody who looks British, wholooks European.' "
China now has over 1 million millionaires, with 90,000 minted just in 2012. Gary Williams, a London-based staffing agent who himself was a butler for fifteen years, credits much of China' s butler demand to Downton Abbey. Watched by millions of Chinese, it's one of the biggest British TV imports ever. The show is more than just a soapy diversion, he says; it's a guidebook for living in a stratified society. "The Chinese aren't even really sure what a British butler should do," says Williams. "It will take them ten to fifteen years to really understand that."
But they'll pay—and pay well—to find out. A new butler willing to go east, to Shanghai or Dubai or anywhere else suffering an Anglo-servant shortage, can start at $60,000 a year and run his employer's estate from the start. In the West, where standards are higher and the competition more fierce, a rookie typically apprentices for a few years and earns a starting salary of maybe $40,000. A butler in either market should hit six figures within five to six years—sooner if he learns a few dirty secrets or gets poached by one of his boss's billionaire friends.
So the money is respectable and the demand is high. Yet buttling—which is the very ludicrous, very real verb for what butlers do—obviously isn't a career that one takes on lightly. I couldn't help but wonder: Who wants to become a butler? There are easier ways to make a living that don't entail all-consuming servitude. So I tracked down butlers from Shanghai to Los Angeles, and even enrolled in butler school, in an effort to peek behind the velvet curtain.
What I saw was the intense, sometimes thankless existence I suspected. A butler supervises his boss's household staff, oversees his meals and entertainment, and attends to his every whim and desire. He must be equal parts concierge and Michael Clayton-esque fixer. In that sense, the basic job requirements haven't changed much in a hundred years. What has changed: the boss. Forget about the dainty lord ringing for his cup of tea. The butlers of today serve paranoid money managers, manor-owning supermodels, Chinese celebrities, and horny sheiks. And they all have stories—horrible, hilarious, sometimes hooker-fueled stories—that they never get to tell, because nobody talks to the butler. Until now.
by David Katz, GQ | Read more:
Image: Sean McCabe
