A sewing machine is a machine used to sew fabric and materials together with thread. Sewing machines were invented during the first Industrial Revolution to decrease the amount of manual sewing work performed in clothing companies. Since the invention of the first sewing machine, generally considered to have been the work of English man Thomas Saint in 1790, the sewing machine has greatly improved the efficiency and productivity of the clothing industry.
Sewing is the craft of fastening or attaching objects using stitches made with a sewing needle and thread. Sewing is one of the oldest of the textile arts, arising in the Paleolithic era. Before the invention of spinning yarn or weaving fabric, archaeologists believe Stone Age people across Europe and Asia sewed fur and leather clothing using bone, antler or ivory sewing-needles and "thread" made of various animal body parts including sinew, catgut, and veins.
Condé Nast is a global mass media company founded in 1909 by Condé Montrose Nast (1873–1942) and owned by Advance Publications. Its headquarters are located at One World Trade Center in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan.
In sewing and fashion design, a pattern is the template from which the parts of a garment are traced onto woven or knitted fabrics before being cut out and assembled. Patterns are usually made of paper, and are sometimes made of sturdier materials like paperboard or cardboard if they need to be more robust to withstand repeated use. The process of making or cutting patterns is sometimes compounded to the one-word Patternmaking, but it can also be written pattern(-)making or pattern cutting.
Ebenezer Butterick was an American tailor, inventor, manufacturer, and fashion business executive, born in Sterling, Massachusetts.
Street & Smith or Street & Smith Publications, Inc., was a New York City publisher specializing in inexpensive paperbacks and magazines referred to as dime novels and pulp fiction. They also published comic books and sporting yearbooks. Among their many titles was the science fiction pulp magazine Astounding Stories, acquired from Clayton Magazines in 1933, and retained until 1961. Street & Smith was founded in 1855, and was bought out in 1959. The Street & Smith headquarters was at 79 Seventh Avenue in Manhattan; it was designed by Henry F. Kilburn.
The Delineator was an American women's magazine of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, founded by the Butterick Publishing Company in 1869 under the name The Metropolitan Monthly. Its name was changed in 1875. The magazine was published on a monthly basis in New York City. In November 1926, under the editorship of Mrs. William Brown Meloney, it absorbed The Designer, founded in 1887 and published by the Standard Fashion Company, a Butterick subsidiary.
Mary Brooks Picken was an American author of 96 books on needlework, sewing, and textile arts. Her Fashion Dictionary was published by Funk and Wagnalls in 1957.
The Simplicity Pattern Company is a manufacturer of sewing pattern guides, under the "Simplicity Pattern", "It's So Easy" and "New Look" brands. The company was founded in 1927 in New York City. During the Great Depression, Simplicity allowed home seamstresses to create fashionable clothing in a reliable manner. The patterns are manufactured in the US but are distributed and sold in Canada, England, and Australia, in some markets by Burda and in Mexico and South Africa by third-party distributors. The company licenses its name to the manufacture of non-textile materials such as sewing machines, doll house kits, and sewing supplies. Simplicity is now owned by CSS Industries.
Grosgrain is a type of fabric or ribbon defined by the fact that its weft is heavier than its warp, creating prominent transverse ribs. Grosgrain is a plain weave corded fabric, with heavier cords than poplin but lighter than faille, and is known for being a firm, close-woven, fine-corded fabric. Grosgrain has a dull appearance, with little luster in comparison to many fabric weaves, such as satin, often used for ribbons; however, it is comparatively very strong. Grosgrain fabric is most commonly available in black, but grosgrain ribbon comes in a large variety of colors and patterns. The ribbon is very similar to Petersham ribbon in its appearance, but it does not have the ability to follow the curves of a surface or edge the way that the latter does.
Fashion design is the art of applying design, aesthetics, clothing construction and natural beauty to clothing and its accessories. It is influenced by culture and different trends, and has varied over time and place. "A fashion designer creates clothing, including dresses, suits, pants, and skirts, and accessories like shoes and handbags, for consumers. He or she can specialize in clothing, accessory, or jewelry design, or may work in more than one of these areas."
A dress is a garment traditionally worn by women or girls consisting of a skirt with an attached bodice. It consists of a top piece that covers the torso and hangs down over the legs. A dress can be any one-piece garment containing a skirt of any length, and can be formal or casual.
William Jennings Demorest (1822–1895) was an American magazine publisher, prohibition leader, and businessman from New York City. In collaboration with his second wife, Ellen Demorest, née Curtis, he attained international success from his wife's development of paper patterns for sewing fashion apparel of the day. Together, they built a fashion manufacturing and merchandising empire from it.
Ellen Louise Demorest was an American businesswoman, fashion arbiter and 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 in 1860. Her dressmaking patterns made French styles accessible to ordinary women, thus greatly influencing US fashion.
William Proctor Wilson was CEO of The Butterick Publishing Company. As President and CEO, Wilson led one of the first leveraged buyouts of the 1980s when a Butterick management group headed by Bill Wilson and John Lehmann purchased the company from American Can. The buyout was $12.5 million, of which all but $500,000 was borrowed. Wilson grew up the middle of three children born to Trevett Abbot Wilson of Warren, Rhode Island and Jesse Proctor of New York. He descended from a long line of influential figures in Rhode Island history, Roger Williams, Nathan Miller, Joel Abbot, and Thomas G. Turner. He was married to Mildred Annette Smith for many years with whom he had two daughters. They divorced in 1976. Later in life, he married his third wife Leona Rocha of Maui, Hawaii, the inventor of the fashion ruler and the 2010 elected member to the Board of Education Maui Residency Seat for the Hawaii Department of Education. The two had worked together at The Butterick Publishing Company when she was their national spokesperson and he the CEO; they remained married until his death in 2010. He, with his wife Leona Rocha, established the William & Leona Wilson Scholarship Fund at the University of Hawaiʻi Maui College.
Vogue Knitting, also known as Vogue Knitting International, is a magazine about knitting published by SoHo Publishing LLC. It is published biannually and includes knitting designs, yarn reviews, and interviews with designers. Vogue International Knitting is a registered trademark of Advance Publications Inc. and is used under a license.
MODE was a fashion magazine aimed towards plus-size women which launched in the spring of 1997. The magazine was praised for targeting the plus-size consumer with a Vogue-like fashion philosophy. MODE also helped to increase the growth of the plus-size industry and the caliber of plus-size clothing and advertising. In 1997, MODE was named the best new magazine launch by Ad Week and Advertising Age. MODE also ran model search competitions in conjunction with the Wilhelmina modeling agency, drawing entries from thousands of hopefuls from the US and Canada. Its circulation was approximately 600,000 at the time of its demise in October 2001.
A sewing pattern is the template from which the parts of a garment are traced onto woven or knitted fabrics before being cut out and assembled. Patterns are usually made of paper, and are sometimes made of sturdier materials like paperboard or cardboard if they need to be more robust to withstand repeated use. Before the mid-19th century, many women sewed their own clothing by hand. Factory-produced fabrics were affordable and available in the early 19th century, but easy-to-use dress patterns and sewing machines for the home seamstress were not sold in the United States until the 1850s.
Feed sack dresses, flour sack dresses, or feedsack dresses were a common article of clothing in rural US and Canadian communities from the late 19th century through the mid 20th century. They were made at home, usually by women, using the cotton sacks in which flour, sugar, animal feed, seeds, and other commodities were packaged, shipped, and sold. They became an iconic part of rural life from the 1920s through the Great Depression, World War II, and post-World War II years.
