How Not to Feel Guilty About Your Pattern Stash


I wasn't intending to post anything today, but I came home to find that some patterns I had ordered from Ebay had arrived. On opening the packet, I was immediately intrigued to find out a bit more about one of them - a Marion Martin mail order pattern from the 1950s. I was unfamiliar with the pattern company but had seen a few patterns from them for sale online. The listing had included a picture of the front of the pattern, but what I also received was the original envelope in which the pattern was dispatched. It was sent from The Pattern Bureau, Fashion Service in New York to a Mrs Don Tuttle of Hornell, New York;


After seeing this, my inner 'museum geek' kicked in, and I set about some Internet research on the pattern company. I found a great set of catalogue scans from a 1950s Anne Adams/Marion Martin on Flickr, which would have been one of the ways for prospective pattern buyer to choose what they wanted.

Using this interesting website, I found out that the Marion Martin Pattern Service was one of several mail order services that was operated by the same parent company (Reader Mail) from different addresses in the same area. It was in existence from 1931 to 1982. The different companies owned by Reader Mail (including Anne Adams also) tended to compete for the same business. The advantage of having different company names was that several adverts could be placed in the same newspaper, cornering the market.

A 1975 interview with Spencer Douglas, Chief Operating Officer of Reader Mail  described him as the;

"president of the world's largest mail-order pattern operation. . . .  For more than 40 years, Douglas' staff of 200 men and women have been turning out thousands of patterns daily for the more than 1,000 newspapers which offer them through their pages, emphasizing that his is a feature service exclusively for newspapers and not retail outlets....Of the millions of pattern orders his firm receives, his employees have the pattern on its way to 75 per cent of the seamstresses the same day 'and the other 25 percent are mailed the next morning.'  He has devised a trade-secret system for sorting the mail which brought postal officials into his plant to take notes."  (source)
 
In an article in the Editor and Publisher the following year,

"Reader Mail was described as 'a newspaper response success story,' and that a single newspaper ad could generate as many as 58,000 responses.  A long-time postal worker at Old Chelsea Station remembers pushing a large, wheeled mail cart across the street at least once a day.  When postal workers found loose coins on the floor, they tossed them into the cart on the assumption they had fallen out of one of the envelopes addressed to the pattern company." (source)

Isn't that interesting? I love finding a bit of history out, sparked off by contact with an object. Today we are so spoiled by having the Internet as an amazing resource to find patterns. It's nice to know that seamstresses in the past, who may not have had a great choice of patterns to buy in their home town, were able to browse catalogues and newspaper adverts to choose patterns. Not only that, but as Mrs Tuttle's pattern is unused, I would say that seamstresses of the past may have been as wooed to buy patterns they never made, as we are today. So don't feel too guilty about those unused patterns lurking in your stash, future seamstresses will be delighted!

K x

13 comments:

  1. What an interesting post, and very timely as I've just taken ownership of yet another pattern! I love stories like that, with a bit of social history attached. Thanks. x

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  2. Very interesting. I think it'd just in most of us to buy loads of patterns and not sew them. I wonder what future fashions will be like, with people saying our present patterns are vintage.

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  3. I really want to say thanks for this post. I knew that the mail order companies were all one, but I hadn't been able to find out more till you did this research.
    I'm going to stick around and see what else you turn up!
    Thanks,
    Tina

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  4. Thanks for your comments ladies, I'm glad others found it as fascinating as me!

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  5. Great post! I love that they put the coins that fell on the floor back on the trolly! Fantastic! Yes, we are super spoiled with the internet....nice to have a bit of history on the pattern companies!

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  6. Really interesting! It intrigues me when I find a vintage pattern with someone's name on it - were they taking it along to a sewing class and didn't want to lose it? Or was it a bit like writing your name in a book, making it part of your "sewing library"?

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  7. Pleased you enjoyed it Debi and Roo!

    I had assumed that a name written on a pattern was done in the shop in which it was bought, to show it was being kept aside for a particular person. Or, maybe if you were lending it to someone you would write your name on it too?

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  8. Haha, thanks, I don't feel so bad about the 20 or so I have lurking under my sewing table now!

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  9. Fascinating! I just found your blog through Googling Marian Martin. I also found a couple of these vintage patterns and wanted to learn about the company. And you answered my questions. Thank you!

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  10. Hi Folks! I was an editor at Reader Mail, on 17th Street in NYC from 1978 until 1983 when I left for a better paying career. I wrote and designed all of the small crafts patterns from that time and resurrected many many others from their archives. If you have any questions about this company and their patterns, I'll be glad to do my best to answer. You can find me on ebay, my ID is helene .

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  11. Thanks for your recent comments, it was so interesting to find out more about the company.

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  12. thank you! i found a doll clothing pattern @ an
    auction...but to my grief some pieces are missing.
    does anyone sell PATTERN BUREAU online. please
    bring the classics back!

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  13. thank you! i found a doll clothing pattern @ an
    auction...but to my grief some pieces are missing.
    does anyone sell PATTERN BUREAU online. please
    bring the classics back!

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for reading and commenting - I love to hear what you have to say