The Demorest Emporium of Fashions moved from Broadway to elegant new quarters at 17 E. 14th Street, New York City, in 1874.
Demorest storefront
Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University.

ELLEN CURTIS DEMOREST (1824-1898), built a New York fashion empire with her husband, William Jennings Demorest, and became the arbiter of style for women. Her development of an accurately sized paper pattern, and its mass distribution through Demorest's Illustrated Monthly and Mme. Demorest's Mirror of Fashions, revolutionized home dressmaking as the sewing machine became a common household fixture. The Demorests helped democratize American dress by placing high style within easy reach of the average woman.

Ellen followed the path of thousands of women in dressmaking and millinery when her father provided her with the financial backing to open a millinery shop in Saratoga Springs, New York. Seeking greater opportunity, Ellen moved to Brooklyn and met her husband, owner of Mme. Demorest's Emporium of Fashions, an enterprise begun with his first wife. Together, they expanded their business to a national market by launching a series of successful women's fashion magazines with tissue paper patterns in each issue. Ellen also added clothing lines and patterns for children and men.

DEMOREST’S ILLUSTRATED MONTHLY
The Demorests’ publishing empire was the vehicle for their business enterprises. Their flagship magazine, Demorest’s Illustrated Monthly and Mme. Demorest’s Mirror of Fashions brought to a growing female readership good fiction, information on the home, and the latest in European fashions in accurately sized and easy-to-use paper patterns for home dressmaking.
Demorest Color Plate from 1875
Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University.

Ellen Demorest took a special interest in improving women's lives. Her shops throughout the country employed thousands of women as sales agents and provided socially acceptable work for women. True to their commitment to racial equality, the Demorests employed African American women in their business on equal terms with white women. All workers, regardless of race, sat together in the workroom and received the same pay. Their enterprises became international, as Ellen opened offices in Paris and London, and printed and distributed paper patterns in foreign languages. Through their magazines, the paper pattern industry, and Emporium, the Demorests dominated the apparel business.
Portrait Photo at top — Ellen Curtis Demorest, 1870. Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of American History, Behring Center.
 
Further Resources

On Ellen Demorest, see Claudia B. Kidwell, Cutting a Fashionable Fit: Dressmakers’ Drafting Systems in the United States (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1979); Joy Sanabel Emery, “Dreams on Paper,” in Barbara Burman, ed., The Culture of Sewing: Gender Consumption and Home Dressmaking (Oxford, Eng.: Bay Publishers, 1999); Notable American Women; John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes, eds., American National Biography (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1999); Caroline Bird, Enterprising Women (New York: Norton, 1976); Vare and Ptacek, Mothers of Invention; Frank Luther Mott, A History of American Magazines, 1865–1885, vol. 3 (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1938); Anne L. Macdonald, Feminine Ingenuity: How Women Inventors Changed America (New York: Ballantine Press, 1992); and Anne Commire, ed., Women in World History: A Biographical Encyclopedia (Waterford, Conn.: Yorkin, 1999). See also Wendy Gamber, The Female Economy: The Millinery and Dressmaking Trades, 1860–1930 (Chicago: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1997). An obituary appears in the New York Times, August 11, 1898. See also Papers of Anna May Curtis Morris, Schlesinger Library, Harvard Univ., Cambridge, Mass. The only full-length biography is Ishbel Ross, Crusades and Crinolines: The Life and Times of Ellen Curtis Demorest and William Jennings Demorest (New York: Harper and Row, 1963); however, the accuracy of some of its information has been questioned.