Avenue de l’Opera, Paris, showing Butterick shop on the right.
The July 1916 edition of the Woman’s Home Companion magazine featured this wonderful photograph of vintage Paris in an ad for Butterick patterns.
Butterick offered American women the chance to easily wear French fashion by purchasing their patterns. I love the photo; to me it is such a romantic scene and just how I envision the streets of Paris looking long ago. The ad reads,
“Paris, Fashion’s Capital, is the cradle of style for the entire world. Butterick goes to Paris for its style inspiration. Then it adapts, illustrates and sends those styles right back from New York to Paris again, where Butterick magazines and Butterick patterns sell in preference to all others.”
Butterick’s shop in Paris
Interior of the Butterick shop in Paris, 1916
“More patterns are sold from this Butterick shop than are sold of any kind of pattern in any other store in the world. They are Butterick patterns – the same identical patterns sold in America, except that they are printed in French and sell for twice the price in France that they do in the United States.”
What I wouldn’t give to walk down those streets and to have a chance to purchase some of those patterns! Often vintage Butterick patterns can still be found for sale today, but a visit to this lovely Parisian store to see them must have been quite a treat.
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