Ellen Louise Demorest

Ellen Louise Demorest (née Curtis) (November 15, 1824 – August 10, 1898) was a US fashion arbiter. She was a successful milliner, widely credited for inventing mass-produced tissue-paper dressmaking patterns. With her husband, William Jennings Demorest, she established a company to sell the patterns, which were adaptations of the latest French fashions, and a magazine to promote them (1860). Her dressmaking patterns made French styles accessible to ordinary women, thus greatly influencing US fashion.

Demorest was born November 15, 1824 in Schuylerville, New York. She was the second of eight children born to Electra Abel Curtis and Henry D. Curtis. Her father was a farmer and the owner of a men's hat factory. At eighteen, Demorest set up a millinery shop in Saratoga Springs with the help of her father. After a year, she moved her business to Troy before relocating again to Williamsburg, Brooklyn. In 1858, she married William Jennings Demorest, a thirty-six year old widower with two children. Demorest gave birth to a son in 1859 and a daughter in 1865.

Early in their marriage, the Demorest's ran a Philadelphia emporium. Ellen and her sister Kate were working on a system of simplified dress making when they say the Demorest's African-American made cutting a dress pattern out of brown paper. Ellen was inspired by the idea to create tissue paper patterns of fashionable garments for the home sewer.

The family relocated to New York and began manufacturing patterns. In the fall of 1860, they launched a quarterly magazine, Mme. Demorest’s Mirror of Fashions. They also opened a women's fashion emporium at 473 Broadway.

Mme. Demorest’s Mirror of Fashions and Demorest’s Illustrated Monthly Magazine soon reached a circulation of 60,000. The magazine was well-timed, coming as sewing machines became common in middle-class homes. Articles in the Mirror of Fashions gave home sewers helpful tips and encouraged readers to believe in their own ability. Reading felt "emancipated... from dependence on milliners and dressmakers."

The fashions worn by Empress Eugenie were of particular interest to the readers of Demorest’s Illustrated Monthly Magazine and Mme. Demorest’s Mirror of Fashions. Correspondents reported on every dress the Empress wore and her gown were reproduced for a semi-annual New York show.

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