Alice West by Simplicity

 Mail-order patterns are something of a specialty of mine.  There were a few brands/nameplates (different "brands" that had a shared publisher) that were well-known and ran for decades: Anne Adams and Marian Martin, American Weekly, the "pattern bureau" family of Edwina/Clotilde/Clarice/Madeline, but there were also some lesser-known or shorter-lived names that pop up and then disappear.

Enter Alice West.

I saw a few of these here and there in the mid-1940s but didn't look at them closely right away.  When I did finally do some focused searches, I realized pretty quickly that I was seeing some design elements that I definitely recognized from other patterns.  This wasn't that surprising, though, since there were style trends and "borrowing" ideas has never been unusual.

But then I ran across 1866.

I would know this pattern anywhere.  I own an original copy of it.  

It's the Simplicity "pirate cuffs" suit.

This is the pattern that was redrafted in 2016 as 8424, if you think it seems familiar.

So once I knew this I started running numbers on Alice West vs. Simplicity to compare them and, yup--Alice West was Simplicity.  

So far I've only seen Alice West ads from 1946 and 1947 so it appears to have been a short-lived endeavor, and some of the styles lag a bit.

 4989 was from 1944 but appears in an ad from 1947:

2014:

1644:

2026.  I own an original copy of this, too, but goodness knows where I thought I'd wear it.

1923:

I'm not sure why Simplicity tried this.  Attempting a mail-order program makes sense--mail-order patterns seem to have been booming in the 1940s when there were still a lot of rural women who might not have a shop nearby that carried many patterns.  But why under a different name?  One reader suggested that maybe it wasn't to dilute the market or damage Simplicity's image, since some of the offerings appear to be clearing old stock, but surely women would have noticed pretty quickly.  Why not just sell them as Simplicity?  Surely a known name would have sold better.

Marian Martin 1931 - Complete number run!

 I'm so happy to announce that I've completed a full number run for Marian Martin patterns for 1931!

See them here: Marian Martin 1931.

 

Marian Martin 9103 (January):

 

. . . to Marian Martin 9259 (December 31):

Mystery pattern 4633

 Well, this mystery is a little bit solved, at least.

I got mail order pattern 4633 a little while ago but have had a dickens of a time finding a date for it because it's a 4000-series number but not an Anne Adams.  

You can tell from the style of the dress that's from about 1946-1948, so that helps, but it's still not coming up in searches.

 The style of the packet is in the Sue Burnett/Barbara Bell/Iris Lane family but it's none of those that I've been able to find, and Anne Adams seems to have monopolized 4000-series numbers.

Well, kids, today at lunch I got on Newspapers.com and dug up Sue Burnett 8083 from 1947.

 . . . eh, I'll take it.

 I still don't know what nameplate it is but at least I've confirmed the "family" and a close-enough date.

Anne Adams 1931 patterns

 I'm still a few images short but here is an almost-complete run of Anne Adams mail order patterns from 1931: Anne Adams 1931.

Ellen Worth patterns

 I have too many things going on right now, but here's one of them: Ellen Worth.

(1933)

This was another mail order line.  I'm not sure if it's yet another sister in the Anne Adams/Marian Martin/Claire Tilden/American Weekly family, but it was often advertised alongside AA and MM.

Ellen Worth folder in Flickr.  This will probably be split as it grows, but this is a start.

May Manton patterns

 May Manton was a mail-order company that advertised in newspapers (and possibly magazines?  Harder to find evidence of this online) from 1889 to the late 1910s, consistently, and possibly into the 1920s.  They used incredible artwork--they should be a coloring book!--in their ads in the 1910s but ran aground financially and seem to have tried to reorganize around 1919-1920.

These are all from 1915. 

I'm still pulling images but links to the albums are posted below.

May Manton 1910-1920s

May Manton 1905-1909

May Manton 1900-1904

May Manton 1890-1899

Claire Tilden 242 and 500 - 1936

Claire Tilden 242 housedress and 500 back-wrap housedress from 1936.

This was a mail-order line and the packet design and artwork look like it might have been another nameplate by the Marian Martin/Anne Adams/sometimes American Weekly parent company. 

So far all the Claire Tildens I've found have three-digit numbers. It looks like it started with 100s in 1936 and ran through the 900s, then restarted with 100s and ran until 1942.

I see some designs that I'm convinced I've also seen as Anne Adams and Marian Martin, but I have to track those down to compare.

Claire Tilden Flickr set.

The Marian Martin 9256 Series

Most pattern companies reuse pattern numbers every ten years or so, which is why the style of garment and the design (layout, lettering, etc.) of the packet are also important when estimating the date on an undated pattern.

Mail-order nameplates Marian Martin, Anne Adams, and American Weekly always used numbers that started with the same digit, so they repeated numbers every three years, give or take.  This makes dating them harder because the difference between styles is less drastic--there was much less change between 1969 to 1972 than between 1947 and 1957.

Martin and Adams had the same parent company, and American Weekly magazine used the same company for at least part of its run. They use 9000 series, 4000 series, and 3000 series numbers, respectively.  Anne Adams used 1000 and 2000 between 1930 and mid-1936 but then stuck to 4000 until the parent company apparently folded in the mid-1980s.

Anyway, as an example of repeated pattern numbers, here are all the Marian Martin 9256s I could find.  I think there must have been one circa 1934 but I've yet to find it.

This also illustrates nicely how hard it can be to estimate dates when styles are only two or three years apart.