Boston Design Laboratory founder Shirley Willett has developed a new production pattern system called Stylometrics, which makes possible the efficient production of couture designs. Her research and development reaches back a lifetime to when she worked as a stitcher in the very first apparel factories where European Jews and other skilled old-world tailors of Boston were using the world's first production patterns. Their elegant innovation would soon be discovered the world over and develop into the apparel industry as we have come to know it.

The mentor-apprentice relationship that was so crucial to the transference of these very specialized skills, has been lost to fashion design education. BDL is dedicated to the mentoring of Boston's young designers, empowering them with the simplicity Stylometrics affords them to profitably produce their own couture designs on any scale.