Vogue and Harper's Bazar were important American showcases for French haute couture. Vogue, from its inception in 1892 as a biweekly magazine covering society and fashion, was meant for an audience at the higher end of the social scale. Although Vogue included ads for American custom dressmakers such as Thurn, Jessie Franklin Turner, and Hattie Carnegie, and both retailer's and manufacturer's ads for ready-to-wear, it was not until February 1938 that Vogue first devoted an entire issue to American fashion.(7) The French and British editions of Vogue, which had their own editorial staffs and relied on local advertising revenue, may be assumed to have promoted even fewer American designers than the parent magazine. In contrast, Harper's Bazar devoted serious space to American couturiers fairly early on. Even before 1900, New York and Paris fashions were reported side by side. Pages of original designs by New York designers Henri Bendel, E.M.A. Steinmetz, and Hermann Patrick Tappé appeared in issues from the 1910s and 1920s [fig. 78].

Many other women's magazines devoted some proportion of their pages to fashion and so employed fashion editors, such as Helen Koues of the Ladies' Home Journal and Isabel DeNyse Conover of Woman's Home Companion. These publications gave fashion direction to middle-class women, while paying close attention to Paris couturiers and Paris trends. This particular print medium, however, was only one of many venues for spreading the fashion gospel.

Dress-pattern companies also put out magazines, such as Vogue Pattern Quarterly, The Delineator, The Pictorial Review, Elite Styles, Le Costume Royal (The Royal Pattern Company), and The Fashionist. Vogue's first patterns, from the mid-1890s, were carried in the parent magazine and were sold mail-order in one size (36" bust) only, with each pattern cut out individually by the originator, Mrs. Rosa Payne, in her home.(8) Sized patterns had been available from other sources, however, since the 1860s. Cut-to-measure patterns copied from French couturiers (almost certainly without authorization) appeared in Vogue after the turn of the century. Paris models of 1911 from Francis, Paquin, Poiret, Bernard, and Bernhardt were illustrated in the May 1 issue at $1 for a coat or skirt and $2 for a suit or gown. The Royal Pattern Company included both unattributed designs and Paris couture styles among its offerings. A 1912 issue showed work by Chéruit, Drécoll, Poiret, Lanvin, Paquin, and Hallée. The company kept the imported models from which the patterns were taken on display in its New York showroom, perhaps indicating that these were actually licensed copies.(9) McCall's Patterns first offered licensed copies of French designs in 1927. Vogue Patterns published its "Paris Couture" patterns in 1931, but since the copies were unlicensed, the names of the original designers were not on the patterns. For most companies, by far the largest number of designs (then as now) were adaptations of the prevailing modes by anonymous stylists, although Butterick Pattern Company was caught making unauthorized copies of Paris models in the 1930s.(10) Except for a brief appearance by some Hollywood costume designers in Butterick's "Starred" patterns in 1933, no evidence has surfaced so far that well known American designers licensed their work to, or were copied by, pattern firms before World War II [fig. 79].(11)