LibGuides: Fashion Resources: Museum & Visual Resources: Fashion: Visual Resources

Online Visual Resource Collections

Ad* Access, Duke University Libraries
The Ad*Access Project "presents images and information on over 7,000 advertisements printed in U.S. and Canadian newspapers and magazines between 1911 and 1955. Ad*Access concentrates on several subject areas including Beauty and Hygiene.
Casey Fashion Plates Collection, Los Angeles Public Library
This digitized collection includes over 6,200 hand-colored fashion illustrations produced between 1780 and 1880 for British and American fashion magazines.
Europeana Fashion
Europeana is an online portal that allows users to Explore fashion - historical clothing and accessories, contemporary designs, catwalk photographs, drawings, sketches, plates, catalogues and videos - from museums and archives across Europe.
Fashion2Fiber
Ohio State University's The Historic Costume & Textiles Collection is a scholarly and artistic resource of apparel and textile material culture. The 11,500+ holdings encompass a range of three dimensional objects such as textiles and articles of clothing and accessories for men, women, and children, including national dress costume, from the mid-18th century to contemporary 21st century designers. Search the collection or browse by decade.
Fashion Plate Collection, Pratt Institute Libraries
Consisting of about 100 images, the Pratt Institute Libraries' Fashion Plate Collection consists of hand-colored fashion plates from the French periodical La Gazette du Bon Ton and its American edition, La Gazette du Bon Genre. The plates date from 1914 to 1922.
Flickr, "The Commons"
The Commons on Flickr was launched as a collaboration with the Library of Congress and now includes digital contributions from a number of museums and historical agencies with the aims of showing "hidden treasures in the world's public photography archives."
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Currently users can only search through the simple search field, or browse by institution or tag. Several institutions have photographic 'sets' such as "cowgirls," "bathing beauties" and "hats" which feature fashion-related images. The images in the Commons have no copyright restrictions, however, the user should read the Rights Restrictions for each institution for more detailed information.
Getty Research Portal
"The Getty Research Portal is an online platform providing global access to digitized art history texts. The Portal is comprised of catalog records that link to full, digitized texts hosted by the contributing institutions or their service providers." Researchers may find important digitized texts by searching for terms such as 'fashion' and 'dress.'
Goldsmiths Textile Collection and Constance Howard Gallery, University of London
This interesting textile teaching collection contains over 4,000 digitized pieces.
Library of Congress, American Memory, Prints & Photographs and Other Collections
"American Memory provides free and open access 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. These materials, from the collections of the Library of Congress and other institutions, chronicle historical events, people, places, and ideas that continue to shape America, serving the public as a resource for education and lifelong learning."
LIFE Magazine Image Archives
The LIFE photo archive contains millions of photographs from the mid-19th century through the present. Images are licensed for "personal non-commercial use only".
London College of Fashion Paper Patterns Collection
The London College of Fashion's Paper Patterns collection includes over 800 sewing patterns dating from the 1920s to the present day. The collection has been digitized and viewers may browse or search by date or decade; the name of the pattern publishers; the type of garment or the name of the designer where specified.
London College of Fashion Victor Stiebel Archive, Fashion Illustrations
The Victor Stiebel Archive includes almost 700 digitized images of couturier Victor Stiebels' fashion sketchbook illustrations from the early 1960s.
Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences
The Margaret Herrick Library is a non-circulating reference and research collection devoted to the history and development of the motion picture as an art form and as an industry. Visitors may wish to explore the library's digital collections with the Costume and Production Design Drawings Collection and Movie Posters collection being of particular interest.
New School Archives and Special Collections
The Parson's New School for Design Archives and Special Collections based in New York has many digitized fashions and illustrations documenting the 20th century history of fashion design.
New York Public Library Digital Collections
This site provides free and open access to over 800,000 images digitized from the The New York Public Library's vast collections, including illuminated manuscripts, historical maps, vintage posters, rare prints, photographs and more.
Scottish Register of Tartans
Created in 2008, the Scottish Register of Tartans is a database of tartans intended to protect, promote and preserve tartan designs. Visitors may search the register, by tartan name or colors, to find information about thousands of tartans. They can also access information on resources in the National Records of Scotland for the study of tartan history.
Textile Industry Historical Collection, Thomas Jefferson University
The Textile Historical Collection is comprised of material related to the social, technological and economic development of the textile industry in the United States, including trade catalogs for textile machinery, dyeing catalogs from United States dyestuff companies, textile company histories, industry business records and personal papers, and textile related ephemera such as trade cards, letterheads, advertising material, and textile industry postcards.
Textile Manufactures of India Sample Books, 1866
Published by the India Office of the British Government in 1866, this 18 volume set of fabric sample books has been digitized, proving textile students with both history and inspiration.
Textiles Collection, University for the Creative Arts at Farnham , UK
This varied historic textiles and textile artifact collection includes over 1,000 items. Examples include Coptic textiles from 800-1000 AD, Kashmir shawls, African strip weaving, Scandinavian furnishing fabrics from 1950 to 1990 and English and French engraved roller prints from 1750 to 1850. Visitors can search the collection by function, origin, maker/designer, raw materials, cloth structure and process.
University of Arts London
UAL’s digital collections includes a variety of collections including the Ballets Russes and the Katherine Hamnett Sustainable Fabric Archive.
Vassar College Costume Collection
The Vassar College Costume Collection features a database of images of original historic clothing, dating from the 1830s to the present. Researchers may browse the collection or do a keyword search to find images of complete pieces as well as images of clothing construction details. The site also includes features a blog and links to past costume exhibits.
Visual Arts Data Service (VADS)
VADS is an online resource for the students and educators in the visual arts. It includes over 100,000 images that are freely available and copyright cleared for use in learning, teaching, and research in the UK. The site includes online fashion and textiles collections from a number of UK art and design colleges and universities.
We Wear Culture, Goolge Arts & Culture
This web portal was "created in collaboration with 180 cultural institutions from 40 countries, We Wear Culture features short documentaries, high resolution images, 360-degree videos, and more. In total, there are no fewer than 30,000 items and 450 exhibits."
Winterthur Library Digital Collections
Online collections of rare books, trade catalogs, manuscripts, ephemera, and photographs related to the study of art, decorative arts and design, everyday life in America, and Winterthur's estate history.

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