In the mid-19th century, Ellen Curtis “Madame” Demorest (1824-1898), aided by her husband William, created a fashion and media empire in New York built on the growing magazine industry and the aspirations of middle-class women who wanted to reproduce current French couture at home, something that was previously only available to the wealthy.

The connection between women’s magazines and fashion wasn’t new. Godey’s Lady’s Book, for instance, which was published from 1830 to 1896 and was the most widely circulated magazine before the American Civil War,[1] was best known for the hand-tinted fashion plates at the front of each issue. Those plates gave women not only a glimpse of what was fashionable, but measurements and patterns.[2]

Madame Demorest leaned into that connection and expanded it. In 1860, the Demorests opened their first shop, on lower Broadway in New York: Madame Demorest’s Emporium of Fashions. Soon thereafter, they began to publish fashion magazines. The first, and the jewel in their publishing crown, was  Mme. Demorest’s Mirror of Fashions, which they described as “The Model Magazine of America.” It started out as a quarterly magazine. Five years later it was successful enough to be published monthly. Eventually the couple published five separate publications, with a combined circulation of more than one million.[3]

Each issue included “Splendid engravings, Original Music, Mammoth Fashion Plates, Entertaining Poems & Stories,[4] Valuable Recipes, Full Size Fashionable Patterns & Other Valuable Novelties.” The back of the magazines were devoted to advertisements, most notably ads for Madame Demorest’s eponymous beauty products: “Mme. Demorest’s Everlasting Perfume,” “Mme. Demorest’s Lilly Bloom for the Complexion,” “Mme. Demorest’s Self Tucking Attachment,”[5] “Mme. Demorest’s Spiral Spring Bosom Pads,”[6] and “Mme. Demorest’s Superior French Corsets.” No matter what your beauty needs, Madame Demorest had you covered–and the magazines were the vehicle for telling you so.

The “Full Size Fashionable Patterns” proved to be the most important part of Madame Demorest’s business. She was probably the first to mass-produce paper dress patterns and sell them directly to customers, using a mathematical system she called the “Excelsior Dress Model” to print different sizes on one pattern. The patterns were included as fold-outs in the magazine, but sales agents also sold “Mme. Demorest’s Reliable Patterns” in cities throughout the United States. They were so popular that the instructions were printed in French, Dutch, Portuguese, German and Spanish as well as English. In 1876, they sold three million patterns through 1500 agents.

The success of the pattern business depended on that of another American innovator, Isaac Singer, whose domestic sewing machines were becoming a staple in American homes.

Demorest was an advocate for women in business as well as a fashion arbiter. Building on her own experience,[7] she urged parents to “teach your daughters some remunerative business. Select for them as you do your sons.” She set off the nineteenth century equivalent of a flame war in 1868 in the Letters to the Editor section of the New York Times when some luckless man dared to opine on “Women’s Work and Wages”—her first response began “Inasmuch as you are not a women, and do not, to any extent, employ women, allow one who is, and does, to reply…” Later that same year, she joined journalist Jane Cunningham Croly in creating the first professional women’s club in New York, after women journalists were barred from attending a reception for Charles Dickens given by the New York Press Club.

There is some disagreement as to whether Madame Demorest or Ebenezer Butterick was the first to mass-produce paper patterns. The timing as I read it leans toward Demorest, but Butterick patented his system and Demorest did not. Guess whose name we remember?

[1] Not the most widely circulated women’s magazine. The most widely circulated magazine. It is easy to dismiss publications for women as somehow lesser than general interest publications.

[2] It is only fair to point out that Godey’s Lady’s Book, like women’s magazines today, was not devoted solely to beauty and fashion. It published stories by men and women, including Edgar Allan Poe, Washington Irving, and Frances Hodgson Burnett. The magazine advocated for education for women and included a regular section titled “Employment for Women” that discussed women in the workplace. And its editor, Sarah, Hale, used it as a platform for her campaign to make Thanksgiving an official holiday. But I digress.

[3] At its height, Godey’s Lady’s Book had a circulation of 150,000.

[4] Including stories by Louisa May Alcott and Julia Ward Howe

[5] Apparently an attachment for sewing machines making it easier to sew tucks, not a better way to keep your shirtwaist tucked-in.

[6] I must admit to curiosity about the spiral spring. The image that came to mind has a Wile E Coyote feel to it, complete with “boing”. The drawing that accompanies the ad did nothing to dispel that since it looks like there is indeed a spiral spring inside the pad. Ouch!

[7] She opened her first business, a successful hat shop, at the age of eighteen—with a little help from her father who owned a men’s hat factory. She ran it until she was 34, when she met and married William Demorest and swept the widowed owner of a dry-goods store into a fashion empire.