Thoughts on McCall’s, Butterick, Kwik Sew, and Vogue Pattern’s 2020 Rebranding

Hi everyone! Recently, while browsing for new McCall’s, Butterick, and Vogue sewing patterns, I discovered I completely rebranded themselves. The rebranding started in early 2020 before the shut downs due to the Covd-19/Coronavirus pandemic with McCall’s. McCall’s new sewing patterns had a new style of logo and look to the front of the envelopes. I wanted to write a post about it, but I was too distracted with the shut downs, the pandemic, and my own health concerts to focus enough to write one.

Within the last two months, I noticed something with McCall’s, Butterick, Vogue, and Kwik Sew’s website: The URL address changed. Instead of typing in something like voguepatterns.com and finding the website of Vogue Patterns, it was redirected to somethingdelightful.com. It did direct to the Vogue Patterns website, but that was odd.

After some searching around the website, I discovered that all the patterns websites are no longer hosted by the McCall’s Pattern Group, the parent company of all four sewing patterns, but Something Delightful.

Something Delightful main page (As of August 17, 2020) looks like this…

In addition to the four sewing pattern brands, a new brand was added to the brand: C.R. Gibson. C.R. Gibson is a stationary, planner, and photo/memory book brand that has been around for 150 years. Although C.R. Gibson’s things look pretty good (And, according to people I know that bought their products, are pretty good quality) I don’t know what this has to do with sewing patterns.

I’m so confused by every pattern company’s rebranding and the shift away from it’s previous business setup. I wondered if something was happening with the parent company because the Cosplay by McCall’s website no longer exists and the blog hasn’t been updated in years. Also, I cannot find the old Cosplay by McCall’s Instagram account. The Cosplay by McCall’s sewing patterns are still in print, but must be purchased from McCall’s website instead of the Cosplay by McCall’s website. In addition to this, some of the Butterick costume sewing patterns are now part of McCall’s costume catalogue and the Patterns by Gertie line with Butterick is gone from the website. (I do see Patterns by Gertie on Simplicity’s website, so there is a chance the pattern line was transferred to Simplicity Patterns)

And don’t forget about Marfy Patterns! Marfy Patterns is no longer available on the Something Delightful website. I was able to find a thread on the PatternReview.com forum asking about Marfy Patterns and where is it on McCall’s website. The thread, started in March 10, 2020, is currently 4 pages long, but, since I don’t have an account I could see only the first page. According to it, the disappearance of Marfy from McCall’s website did not go unnoticed and there seemed to be a lack of communication about Marfy Patterns and if the patterns will be available on the McCall’s website. (Lack of communication is more like not notifying anyone about any changes.) Marfy Patterns are still available on the Italian website translated to English, but not on McCall’s. Also, there is no formal announcement about what’s going on or making customers aware of any sort of changes that will directly affect them. Despite this, there is a section dedicated to Marfy Patterns on the Something Delightful website.

There are no patterns listed for sale, but there is a section dedicated to Marfy Patterns. Still, in order to buy Marfy Patterns, as of August 17, 2020, is directly from the Italian website.

The dramatic shift and quiet changes over the past few months are startling and upsetting to me. Of course everything must change, but the sudden change during this time of the year without any sort of formal announcement peaks my insert and my concerns. I didn’t receive emails from any of the pattern companies about this change until a month after I saw something happen in February and I didn’t receive any emails about the addition to C.R. Gibson to their website until July. People can blame this on the shut down of the warehouses for all four pattern companies, but the website still changed. I saw new digital patterns added to the McCall’s website as well as new designs that eventually became part of the Summer 2020 collection. So, people did work on the website, but they didn’t do anything to alert customers that there is a change or what was going on.

Overall, I’m pretty annoyed, angry, and put off about this and the lack of announcements and the delay of addressing anything dealing with the rebranding of the McCall Pattern Company. Back in February, March, and April I couldn’t find any information about the rebranding and on August 17 I was able to find an article about CSS Industries Inc’s acquisition of the business and assets of The McCall Pattern Company from December 2016. There is a chance this rebranding could be what CSS Industries Inc planed for The McCall Pattern Company when it acquired it, but to be so quiet was a huge surprise. Especially since there are pattern collaborations that suddenly disappeared or are discontinued/out of print around the time of the rebranding.

I’m not sure what’s going on, but this is something I wish more people would mention online. It’s something that affects every home sewer and professionals alike in one way or another, no matter if they buy patterns in store or online. As much as I would like to share my more opinions about this and how angering this is to me, I’ll stop before I get too carried away.

Well, that’s all for now! Thank you for reading!