Spadea Mail Order Designer Fashion
Spadea was another of the mail order companies. These patterns are among the most prized by collectors. Many of the important and popular designers of the 1950s and 1960s designed patterns for Spadea, including Ceil Chapman, Jo Copeland, Suzy Perette, Alan Graham, Anne Fogarty, Biki, Bill Blass, Brigance, Capucci, Charles Le Maire, Charles Montaigne, Dinah Shore, Eguzquiza, Fontana, Harvey Berin, Herbert Sondheim, Irene Gilbert, Joset Walker, Mollie Parnis, Monte Sano, Nancy Layton, Norman Hartnell, Shannon Rodgers, Simonetta, Anthony Blotta, Veneziani, Vera Maxwell and Lachasse of London.
The company was begun by a fashion artist-illustrator, Jean Miller Spadea, and her husband, James Spadea who was a magazine ad man. James had the account for Butterick patterns and pitched Jean’s idea for a designer pattern line to Butterick. Butterick turned the idea down and James and Jean decided to do it themselves. In the early 50s they began a syndicated column to newspapers You’re Sew Right which marketed the pattern line American Designer’s Patterns. Later the patterns were called Spadea Designer Patterns.
Spadea patterns were sized differently, using sizing in line with ready-t0-wear garments. Spadea patterns were made directly from a master garment with care taken to make the garment easier to construct. They sized their garments up and down from a size 12. Spadea never produced printed patterns. They continued to make theirs perforated and precut, claiming that it made for a more accurate fit for the home seamstress.
Sources:
My father was Jim Spadea’s cousin on his mother’s side.
I am putting together a family history and would be interested in hearing from his heirs. Any information regarding Jim or his brothers Joe or George will be appreciated. I did an interview with Jim in 1986, for an oral history of Brockton , Massachusetts his home town. As I remember the interview took place at the Thorny Lee country Club in Brockton.