Research Guides: Costume Design &amp; Textile History: Home

costume design + textile history

Resources We Recommend

Art & Architecture ePortal
A powerful search tool from Yale University that integrates image and text searches in innovative and powerful ways.
FIT's Fashion History Timeline
"The Fashion History Timeline is an open-access source for fashion history knowledge, featuring objects and artworks from over a hundred museums and libraries that span the globe. The Timeline website offers well-researched, accessibly written entries on specific artworks, garments and films for those interested in fashion and dress history."
FIT Digital Image Library
A good place to find primary sources, the Fashion Institute of Technology's digital collections have many open-access resources available to everyone.
JSTOR Images
Image collections from universities and museums on a wide variety of subjects.
Vogue Magazine
An excellent primary source, the library has a physical collection of Vogue magazine with issues dating back to 1915. These need to be requested from off-site storage and used in the library. We can help you with this.

Textile Collections

Large museums, like the ones linked below, have the resources to photograph and make large portions of their collections available online.

Other good places to look for textile collections are historical societies, local and regional museums, and historic house museums. These institutions often don't have the resources to extensively document their collections online. However, they will welcome your research inquiries.

Don't feel shy about reaching out to curators or registrars at smaller institutions about their collections. Staff will likely be excited you are interested and you may find unexpected hidden gems!

Metropolitan Musem of Art
A large and well-documented collection of textiles and extant garments.
The Kyoto Costume Institute's Digital Archive
13,000 object costume collection, organized by decade from 1700-2010s.
Victoria & Albert Museum
An extensive collection of design and decorative arts with a global focus spanning 5000 years.

Costume Design & Textile History

Head, Art & Architecture Library

Helpful Links

Resources at VT

Resources We Recommend

Textile Collections