The Elite Cocktail Culture

You think you know everything people do in the world? You think the internet avails you of all this knowledge? ...I smile.

What you know is just the commonplace...

“Diamonds are a girl's best friend.” No they're not. Of course everyone knows the marketing plan De Beers ran from way back, even before Marilyn Monroe's wonderful screen rendition of the song. But what you don't know is that in antiquity, diamond's were legendarily for men.

In the book “The Travels of Sir John Mandeville,” this ancient belief is related there, namely, that a diamond, if given to a man, will make him indomitable and guaranteed to succeed in all his endeavours.

And so, if diamonds are really for men – and better so if given to them(!) - what then do or should women wear in rings, that are the best thing for them?

So little does the common person know that I hesitate to break the silence of the elite...

Well, let me just say that, in the 1920's – in the Prohibition Era – it was certainly true that cocktail rings worn by women, were a sign of revolution; and this is not a rare item of knowledge about social customs or codes. Some people argue that the oft-attested 'fan code' of the Victorian Era was not nearly as common or well-organised or understood as is pushed by Romance Novels. However, the opera glove code, or 'wordless language' of signs using gloves, became quite well-known from at least the 1920's through well into the 40's and early 50's – and it was indeed very much from the romantic 'fan code' that its own linguistics sprang.

What I am prepared to tell you right here and now, is that among the most sophisticated in modern Europe – that is to say among the crème de la crème of modern haute salon society – the secret code of cocktail rings allows for assignations to be made between adults, and that not a lot has changed since the time of the Serene Republic and when 'the game of eggs' was played in those days between masked, fascinating strangers and their secret dalliances and potential future lovers.

However it is most important to again distinguish the romance from the actuality: nobody really learns precise 'codes' as some kind of litany requiring that precision and an extensive secretive code vocabulary – developed ideas are often just games going on in the head of the individual on one side. But there is an unbroken set of simple social traditions preserved among sophisticates, usually of 'a certain age' - as they say - which goes back through the social disturbances of economic crises, and the big wars, including the Napoleonic too, really. And it consists of a few simple ideas like this: adults have to have developed adult tastes before they can fully participate in adult games. There are many people who indeed believe they are 'grown up' and have passed the nominally juvenile years; but they are not 'grown up.'

For a man to have developed adult tastes, he must know how to take fresh oysters with his martinis. How to acquire their flavour, to take with salt or not with salt, or add spice or hot pepper sauce. Such things are acquired tastes. Whether among adult men or women, they are acquired tastes and habits. To wear one's cocktail ring on the index finger is good, or on the middle finger – these denote consecutively: positive power and balance. But to wear one's cocktail ring on the little finger implies one must expect to have to, at some point, drink one's martinis standing up.

All The Best To My Faithful Readers,

(Not) Ian Fleming