Most American dressmaker copied or adapted french styles,but issue at the end at hand is not simply one of center versus periphery.The structure of the American fashion industry and the culture of fashion in America milted against the recognition of individual fashion designers.America's Puritan heritage and nation's ideology of egalitarianism resulted in a pervasive culture suspicion of fashion.At the same time ,many American women were attached by precisely these chracterstics.As a result,both custom dressmaker and manufacturs of ready to wear clothes frequently imported french dresses and/or sewed false paris label into amrecan made dresses.
The first american women to achieve national reputation for fashion inovation was
Ellen curtis demorest known professionally as
Madame demorest,she was "as important to american nineteenth century fashion as worth would be the development of paris couture.Morethan any else .she foresaw the struture of american fashion as the comination of innvention,prodution,education,marketting and distribution.
