In 1863 tailor, Ebenezer Butterick, and his seamstress wife, Ellen, established the Butterick Company, the oldest recognized commercial clothing paper pattern company in the U.S. in Sterling, Massachusetts. Butterick was the innovator of standard sizing for paper patterns for clothing. Initially the patterns were cut and sold for children’s and men’s clothing and then expanded to women’s garments in 1866. Unlike his competiors, Butterick took out patents on the process. The company was moved to Fitchburg, MA and then to New York City by 1867. Aimed at the home sewer rather than the commercial dressmaker, the patterns quickly became popular.To promote the fashions, Butterick published the Ladies Quarterly Report of Broadway Fashions and Metropolitan in 1869. The latter evolved into The Delineator. Butterick began a partnership with Jones Warren Wilder in 1867. Ellen died in 1871. When the company reorganized in 1881, Butterick maintained a third interest in the company, Wilder and Butterick’s brother in law, Abner Pollard, managed the com any business. Wilder died in 1894 and the company was sold to Jones Wilder’s son, George, around 1898. Butterick died in 1903. The company continued with fluctuating success surviving the Depression and War years of the 1940s and the Post-War years as the population boomed and moved to the suburbs. In 1961 Butterick Co. licensed the name of Vogue from Conde Naste. Vogue patterns had begun in 1905 as a feature of the magazine of the same name. Butterick continued to innovate its designs to attract a busier but still fashion conscious clientele. In 1974 Butterick introduced “See and Sew”, a less expensive line of patterns. Designer patterns in Vogue’s “Americana” , “Paris Original” pattern series, later “Attitudes” (1980s) and “Individualist” (1990s) promoted the designs of well established and up and coming designers. In 2007 by McCall Pattern Company acquired the company. Each company, McCall, Butterick, and Vogue continues its own brand name.