Drapes Is a Verb

Just as I wrote in my post When Is a Vase a Vahz? that one never pronounces "vase" to rhyme with anything other than "place," one also never refers to "curtains" as "drapes."  It's just not done.  The use of that word to describe one's curtains is a genteelism that MD abhorred.  She instructed young Reggie never to use it when referring to what one hangs at one's windows.  That's because "drapes" is a verb and not a noun.  One drapes fabric, one does not hang drapes at one's windows.  There are no circumstances when such use of that word is acceptable.  And I mean none.

These are curtains and not drapes
Image from Authentic Decor: the Domestic Interior, 1620-1920, by Peter Thornton

When Reggie hears someone refer to curtains as "drapes," it's as if he's being subjected to the sound of finger nails screetching across a blackboard.  It makes him cringe.  And that's because it is so obviously wrong.

Designer Jacques Fath drapes himself with fabric
Paris, 1951
Image courtesy of LIFE Archive

I once saw an ad on television when I was a boy that hilariously demonstrated why it is that people educated in such matters do not refer to curtains as "drapes."  I thought it was very clever, and I have remembered it ever since.  The commercial (I think it was for a window manufacturer) amusingly portrayed the progression of a woman's interaction with a household domestic over time, as she moved up the socio-economic ladder from rather humble beginnings to a far richer and more sophisticated existence.

Those are not red drapes at the windows in this dining room,
those are curtains
Image from Authentic Decor by Peter Thornton

The first scene in the advertisement shows the woman and the maid, both wearing plain outfits, in a small attached house in a lower-middle-class neighborhood, where the woman, who is clearly feeling her way through such matters, somewhat self-consciously instructs her maid, "Maggie, draw the drapes!" while pointing to a window dressed with frilly, inexpensive curtains.  The maid responds by rolling her eyes and a "Get her!" shrug.

Alphonse Berge, "the Great Drapo," drapes fabric 
on a model, New York, 1940
Image courtesy of LIFE Archive

The second scene shows the same woman and maid, five or so years later, in a larger, meant-to-impress house in the suburbs, where both are more expensively dressed than before, with the lady of the house wearing a cocktail dress and the maid in a full parlor-maid uniform.  In the scene the woman instructs the maid, "Margaret, draw the draperies, I mean curtains!" while pointing to windows dressed with elaborate, swagged curtains.  The maid again responds by rolling her eyes and giving a shrug.

That diaphanous fabric at the window?  Curtains!
Image from Authentic Decor by Peter Thornton

The final scene takes place yet another five years later in a super-modern, enormous, severely decorated penthouse apartment in Manhattan, where the woman, now wearing capri pants with a scarf rakishly tied around her neck and smoking a cigarette in a long holder, Auntie Mame style, instructs her maid, who is wearing a Courrege-type white outfit, "Margot, do your thing!" while pointing to a wall of plate glass windows dressed with plain curtain panels.  And the maid, yet again, responds by rolling her eyes at her mistress and giving a shrug.

Curtains do not require swags or jabots
Image from David Hicks: Designer, by Ashley Hicks

The advertisement humorously acknowledged that referring to one's curtains as "drapes" (or "draperies" for that matter) was considered to be less than desirable, and that people of sophistication refrain from doing so.  And Reggie thought it was a scream.

They may leave you speechless, but they are curtains
Image from Colefax & Fowler, by Chester Jones

But the advertisement, for all its clever humor, was correct:  People who are knowledgable about such things do not refer to curtains as anything other than curtains.  And they never use the word "drapes" as anything but a verb.

Whether elaborate or plain, they are still curtains 
Image from Van Day Truex, by Adam Lewis

Over the years Reggie has polled various people whom he has heard use the word "drapes" when referring to curtains, asking them why they did so.  And he learned that, in many cases, they thought "drapes" sounds nicer than "curtains."  In other words it's more refined.  Actually, it is anything but.  It is a misguided and pretentious genteelism, much like extending one's little finger while sipping from a teacup, or pronouncing "vase" as "vahz" (at least on this side of the pond).

Ungainly?  Yes.  Drapes?  No!
Image from Authentic Decor, by Peter Thornton

Other people he has asked have said that they believed curtains are simpler, less elaborate versions of drapes, such as one would have at the windows in one's kitchen or bathroom.  They reserve the use of "drapes" to describe the more elaborate, and more expensive, curtains found in a house's more public rooms.  Reggie understands how some people could come to have this impression, but it is a mistaken one, and it is to be avoided.  Curtains, whether hanging at the window of a modest kitchen or in a Duke's lavishly appointed drawing room, are still curtains.  They are never "drapes."  Ever!

To whit:

• Jimmy Cagney, in the film Angels With Dirty Faces, did not snarl "It's drapes for you!" as he pulled the trigger on the gun he was pointing at his hapless victim
• Winston Churchill did not famously describe the division between the free Western world and the repressive Communist one as "The Iron Drape"
• Talulah Bankhead, when curtseying to her audience at the close of a play was not taking a "drape call," nor is the lowering of a stage's curtain at the end of a play or musical performance referred to as "the final drape"
• Dorothy, in the film of The Wizard of Oz, was not ordered to "Pay no attention to that man behind the drape!" when beseeching the wizard to send her back home to Kansas, and
• The mail order business that sells ready-made curtains of dubious taste seen in kitchens across America is not called "Country Drapes"

Because they are curtains, and they are not, nor will they ever be, "drapes."

And with that, Reggie rests his case.