Vintage Sewing Patterns

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The first commercially produced sewing patterns were designed in the mid-1800s by an American milliner named Ellen Curtis Demorest. With her husband, William Jenning Demorest, she founded a company to bring au courant French fashions to the...
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The first commercially produced sewing patterns were designed in the mid-1800s by an American milliner named Ellen Curtis Demorest. With her husband, William Jenning Demorest, she founded a company to bring au courant French fashions to the United States via sewing. To market these latest European styles and her patterns of them, the couple launched a magazine called “Madame Demorest’s Mirror of Fashion” in 1860. But American tailor Ebenezer Butterick was the first to produce sewing patterns—which were pre-cut and marked with notches and perforations—out of tissue paper. His first patterns for men’s and boys’ clothing came out in 1863, and they were the first patterns to be offered in various sizes, what are known as “graded patterns.” An early hit for E. Butterick & Co. was the Garibaldi Suit for men. In 1866, Butterick finally produced its first dress pattern for women. Before the invention of patterns, most women could only afford to take apart old, worn-out garments and reconstruct them out of newer fabric. Only affluent, high-society ladies had the money to wear the newest styles coming out of Paris and New York made for them by high-end designers and tailors. Butterick’s graded tissue paper patterns had a wide-reaching impact, offering access to high fashion to almost anyone who could sew, in the United States and various countries around the globe. By 1903, Butterick was one of the largest manufacturers in the world. After Butterick started, three other major pattern brands emerged: McCall’s, Vogue, and Simplicity. These four brands are still available today, while names like Advance, Hollywood, Style, Anne Adams, Burda, Hawaiian, DuBarry, Modes Royale, American Designers, Spadea, New York, Marian Martin, Woman’s Day, and Superior have come and gone. Many of these were among the myriad pattern brands offered via mail order during the 20th century. Butterick, too, pushed its mail-order patterns through fashion magazines, the first being the...
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