Ellen Louise Demorest (1825–1898) was a US fashion arbiter. She was a successful milliner, widely credited for inventing mass-produced tissue-paper dressmaking patterns. With her husband, William Jennings Demorest, she established a company to sell the patterns, which were adaptations of the latest French fashions, and a magazine to promote them (1860). Her dressmaking patterns made French styles accessible to ordinary women, thus greatly influencing US fashion.Before embarking into pattern making, Ellen Louise Demorest had been a prosperous hat manufacturer. But, when she saw her maid cutting out a dress from some wrapping paper, she was struck with the idea that she could copy fashionable garments on to paper for the home sewer.
Aided by her sister and husband, Ellen Demorest devised a mathematical system to print patterns in a variety of sizes. In 1860 Madame Demorest's Mirror of Fashions, a pattern catalog, was introduced and by 1865 Demorest was so successful that she had thirty distribution agencies across the nation with over 200 saleswomen. Her success in paper patterns spawned a mail order empire for women eager to acquire the latest fashions and accessories from New York.