CHAPTER 2
BUTTERICK PATTERNS
What They Are, What They Do. How to Buy the Right Size, How to Buy Your Materials, How to Use Your Pattern Correctly
BUTTERICK PATTERNS are always in advance. They are the smartest in style, and give the prettiest versions of new fashions. They are the easiest to use and are fully guaranteed in every way. They are designed by a staff whose headquarters are in Paris and New York. This staff is in constant touch with the work of the most famous French dressmakers such as Worth, Doueet, Paul Poiret. Madame Paquin, Dteuillet, Chéruit, Agnes, Jeanne Lanvin, Jenny, Premet, Beer, Redfern and Martial et Armand. During the Paris season the Butterick staff attend the French races, the smart restaurants, the opera and the new plays where the newest fashions are shown, in order to adapt them immediately to American needs in the Butterick Pattern. The Paris social season is in the Spring, the London season in the early Summer, the Deauville and Biarritz seasons in Midsummer, the New York season from November until Lent, the Palm Beach season in January and early-February, and the Nice and Monte Carlo season in March. It is therefore possible for the Butterick staff to work directly at the sources of the fashions which would be impractical if all these seasons occurred at the same time.
More Butterick Patterns are sold in Paris than all other makes of French patterns. The smart Frenchwoman uses Butterick Patterns because she is in a position to compare them with the fashions of the Rue de la Paix and knows the Butterick Patterns give her the latest French styles.
WHAT THEY ARE. The Butterick Pattern gives you the actual shape of every new fashion and for every type of garment tor women, young girls, children, boys and babies, and for every kind of garment that a woman should undertake to make for the men in her family. The Butterick Patterns give the professional dressmaker patterns that she can not afford to make herself. If she is sufficiently expert to be able to draft a good pattern her time is worth several hundred times the small amount which she pays for the Butterick pattern. If she is not expert enough to make a pattern, the Butterick pattern made by the highest grade of professionals saves her the ruinously expensive mistakes that she would make if she attempted to cut her own patterns.
HOW TO BUY THE RIGHT SIZE. It is absolutely essential that you buy your pattern by the right size. In no other way can you be sure of securing the perfect lines of the original design. The right size will save you time because it means that there will be no unnecessary fitting. It will save your material. A size too large takes more material than you require while a size that is too small might make your dress unwearable. Insist on being measured each time you buy a pattern. New corsets or an unsuspected change of weight may have altered your bust, waist or hip measure. Before buying a pattern put on your best corsets and lace them properly. Wear a waist or dress that fits nicely. Never be measured in old corsets, over your coat, or in a clumsy dress or a negligee.
The bust measure only is used in buying waists, blouses, dresses, coats and underwear (except petticoats and drawers). Buy them all by the same bust measure. If you buy a thirty-six bust waist buy a thirty-six bust coat or chemise.
Don't buy a larger size for your coat or a smaller size for your underwear. A coat
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