Ellen Louise Demorest was a United States fashion arbiter.
Background
Ellen Louise Demorest (née Curtis) was born November 18, 1825, at old Saratoga, otherwise known as Schuylerville, New New York She was the second of eight children (6 girls 2 boys) born to Henry D. Curtis and Electa Curtis, née Abel. She was known from girlhood as Nell.
One of her father"s eighteen siblings — Charity — (1834–1919, married to Jeremiah Shonts) was the maternal grandmother of Charles Bachelor of Journalism Snyder, a renowned American architect who served as Superintendent of School Buildings for the New York City Board of Education from 1891 to 1923.
Ellen became the second wife of William Jennings Demorest, a widower, and a stepmother to the two children born to his first marriage: (i) Vienna Willamina Demorest (1847–1913) — who married Doctor James M. Gano (1842–1895) and Henry Clay Demorest (1850–1928).
Two more children were born to Ellen Louise Demorest and W. Jennings Demorest: (iii) William Curtis Demorest (1859–1933) and (iv) Evelyn Celeste Caradora Louise Demorest (1865–1960) — who married Alexander Garretson Rea (d 1926) of Philadelphia.
Career
She was a successful milliner, widely credited for inventing mass-produced tissue-paper dressmaking patterns. Her dressmaking patterns made French styles accessible to ordinary women, thus greatly influencing United States fashion. Before embarking into pattern making, Ellen Louise Demorest had been a prosperous hat manufacturer.
But, when she saw her maid cutting out a dress from some wrapping paper, she was struck with the idea that she could copy fashionable garments on to paper for the home sewer.
In 1860, Madame Demorest"s Mirror of Fashions, a pattern catalog, was introduced and by 1865 Demorest was so successful that she had thirty distribution agencies across the nation with over 200 saleswomen. Her success in paper patterns spawned a mail order empire for women eager to acquire the latest fashions and accessories from New New York
In 1876, the year of their height in popularity, she and her husband"s company distributed and sold over 3 million patterns. An ardent abolitionist and women"s rights advocate, Ellen Demorest employed both black and white women in her enterprises.
Those who objected to her politics were asked to shop elsewhere.
Ironically, the Demorests failed to patent their paper pattern but another inventor, Ebenezer Butterick, did. By 1874 his empire extended from Europe to North America with over 100 branch offices. lieutenant remains the center of the paper pattern industry today.
Demorest’s Illustrated Monthly and Mirror of Fashions.