Fashion History: Home

"Although the human foot has remained unchanged for thousands of years, what people have worn on their feet shows incredible diversity. It is in this diversity that some of the most interesting aspects of culture are revealed. By using footwear as a point of entry, the Bata Shoe Museum shares these compelling stories through special virtual versions of some of our most important past exhibitions. "

"American Memory provides free and open access through the Internet to written and spoken words, sound recordings, still and moving images, prints, maps, and sheet music that document the American experience. It is a digital record of American history and creativity."

"This digital collection of fashion plates brings together two separate fashion plate collections in the Special Collections Research Center. The Little-Bower Fashion Plate collection (1798-1917, 1967, 2003) was assembled by Charlotte Northrup Little, preserved by her daughter, Charlotte Little Bower and donated by her granddaughter, Cynthia Bower Smith. The Nineteenth Century Fashion Plate collection (1836-1876) was donated by Henry Madden."

"650 images of nineteenth-century fashion plates ... The full-color fashion plates in the Kirby collection were culled from a variety of women's periodicals and other mass-circulating works published between 1789 and 1914. The images are primarily from France, Britain, America, and Spain, and depict scenes of nineteenth-century middle- and upper-class life with an emphasis on the leisure practices of bourgeois women, men, and children."

guide to research using the NYPL collections, but may have some information of use.

"The Costume Society of America advances the global understanding of all aspects of dress and appearance. We work to stimulate scholarship and encourage study in the rich and diverse field of costume."

"Several rare and unusual published resources of interest to students of western dress and fashion from the 19th to the early 20th-century. Includes historical surveys as well as manufacturers' booklets and sample swatch catalogs. "

"searchable database of archival data and detailed graphics for the Drexel Historic Costume Collection, housed in the Antoinette Westphal College of Media Arts & Design, Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA., as well as objects loaned to the project for inclusion in the database.
This site provides detailed information for fashion and textile design students, fashion professionals, historic costume scholars, and followers of fashion trends, current and past."

"Fashion-era contains 870 content rich, illustrated pages of Fashion History, Costume History, Clothing, Fashions and Social History."

"an ongoing examination of the history and development of footwear and shoemaking techniques up to the end of the Sixteenth Century"

great resource on reproducing fashions of the late 1700s-1820s

"Search millions of photographs from the LIFE photo archive, stretching from the 1750s to today. Most were never published and are now available for the first time through the joint work of LIFE and Google."

"Several rare and unusual published resources of interest to students of western dress and fashion from the 19th to the early 20th-century. Includes historical surveys as well as manufacturers' booklets and sample swatch catalogs. "

guide to research using the NYPL collections, but may have some information of use.

"The UNT Texas Fashion Collection is dedicated to the preservation and documentation of historically significant fashion, and serves as an educational and inspirational resource for students, researchers, and the general public. "

"A Central Location on the Web for Fashion and Costume for 16 years."

"Welcome to The Costume Page, my personal library of costume and costuming-related links. I'm sharing it for the benefit of those who study and/or make costumes: costumers, students, historical re-enactors, science fiction fans, professionals, amateurs, dancers, theatrical costumers, trick-or-treaters, writers, researchers, and all those interested in fashion, textile art, and costume history. "

"We are a lively, friendly organisation whose aim is to promote the study and preservation of historic and contemporary dress."

"The Fashion Museum is one of the world’s great museum collections of historic and fashionable dress. Designated as a collection of outstanding national significance, the Fashion Museum was recently listed by CNN as one of the world’s Top 10 fashion museums."

"The "History of Costume" or "Zur Geschichte der Kostüme" was printed from 1861 to 1880 in Munich by the publishing firm of Braun and Schneider. It was originally published as individual plates in a German magazine titled "Münchener Bilderbogen". Later, these plates were collected and bound into book form. The total publication consisted of 125 pages, with four pictures per pages, for a total of 500 costume designs. These plates consisted of historical dress from antiquity to the end of the 19th century.

"The 417 digital images cover many stylistic periods in French and English history. These include the Empire (1806-1813), Georgian (1806-1836), Regency (1811-1820), Romantic (1825-1850), Victorian (1837-1859), Late Victorian (1860-1900) and Edwardian (1901-1915)."

"VADS is the online resource for visual arts. It has provided services to the academic community for 12 years and has built up a considerable portfolio of visual art collections comprising over 100,000 images that are freely available and copyright cleared for use in learning, teaching and research in the UK."

"The Wisconsin Decorative Arts Database is a new online resource for the study of craft traditions, manufacturing, state and local history, and material culture. This searchable archive brings together examples of furniture, ceramics, textiles, and other 19th and early 20th century material culture artifacts from the collections of museums and historic sites across Wisconsin."

An online database showcasing the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which features more than thirty-five thousand costumes and accessories from the fifteenth century to the present.

The Victoria and Albert Museum in London is the world's largest museum of decorative arts and design. Their website features images and articles on contemporary and historical fashion exhibitions and events.

A rich resource within the Museum’s holdings that totals over 10,000 items and spans over three centuries of fashion history.

Hundreds of thousands of fashion items from 19 leading European fashion and costume institutions.

Covers the development of western fashion and costume history from the 1800s to the present, including the influence of social trends and technology.

"Fashion plates are from some of the leading French, British, American, and other continental fashion journals of the 19th century and early 20th century." One of the University of Washington Libraries Digital Collections.

An image blog of fifties fashion.

An image blog of sixties fashion.

An image blog of seventies fashion. Check the archive for additional images.

"The exhibition (at the Metropolitan Museum of Art), organized by The Costume Institute, celebrated the late Alexander McQueen’s extraordinary contributions to fashion."

A collection featuring more than 5000 images, videos and sketches from Valentino's 50 year career in fashion.