LibGuides: Theatre: Fashion and Design

Online Fashion & Costume Collections

Fashion History

Fashion History Timeline
Open access resource covering fashion history, featuring objects and art from a variety of libraries and museums and written entries on specific artworks, garments, and films.
The Fashion and Race Database
Resource for open source tools that expand the narrative of fashion history and challenge mis-representation within the fashion system.
Encyclopedia of Clothing and Fashion
Coverage includes the origins of clothing and body adornment, the development of fabrics and technologies, and the social meanings of dress, as well as representative costumes from a wide range of historical eras. Also available in print, main library reference, GT507. E53 2005

Clothing & Costume Images

Berg Fashion This link opens in a new window
Includes the Berg Encyclopedia of World Dress and Fashion as well as content from other electronic books and journals related to dress and fashion. Also includes images from V & A Museum's internationally renowned fashion collection and other sources.
Vogue Archive This link opens in a new window
Searchable archive of the entire run of Vogue, including images and advertisements.

NYPL Digital Collections: Fashion
Images from design firms such as André Fashion Studios and Creator Studios. Particularly strong for 1930s-1970s ready to wear.
Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute
Digitized images from the Met. Browse by type of type/material, location, or date.
Kyoto Costume Institute
Selected images from the holdings of the Institute, dating back to the 1700s. Browse by decade.
Victoria & Albert Museum: Fashion
European fashion from the 17th century to the present.

Visual Arts

ARTstor This link opens in a new window
Digital library of art images, associated information, and software tools. Includes Brooklyn Museum costume collections held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art and about 5,000 fashion images from Condé Nast.

VADS
Includes collections relating to fashion, textiles, design and architecture.

Newspapers & Magazines

ProQuest Historical Newspapers This link opens in a new window
Full text of historical newspapers, including the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, and Boston Globe.
Readers' Guide Retrospective This link opens in a new window
This database indexes the popular periodical literature from 1890 to 1982. Sometimes a good source for identifying images that would have accompanied these articles.

LIFE Photo Archive
Photos from the LIFE photo archive, dating from the 1750s to present. Most were never published.

Clothing Patterns

COPA: Commercial Pattern Archive
Over 50,000 images of sewing patterns from 1847 to present. Note: users need to contact database administrators for login information.
Vintage Patterns Wikia
A crowd-sourced collection of sewing patterns from before 1995.

Design & Production

Online resources:

Nexis Uni This link opens in a new window
Search for designer and/or production information in articles from the NY Times and other major U.S. newspapers, 1980-present
ProQuest Historical Newspapers This link opens in a new window
Search for designer and/or production information in articles from the NY Times and other major U.S. newspapers. Coverage back to mid-nineteenth century for most titles

Finding additional resources:

Books are available both at the PARC and in the main library. To find items in the Reed College library catalog relating to set or lighting design, try an Advanced Search by Subject using one of the following terms:

Scene painting
Stage lighting
Stage machinery
Theaters-- Stage-setting and scenery

Print Resources

Columbia Encyclopedia of Modern Drama
Possible starting point for locating production information - search by dramatist, play title, genre, or designer (1860-present). PARC books, PN1861. C65 2007
International Dictionary of Theatre
See Volume 3: Actors, directors and designers. PARC books, PN2035 I49 1992

Finding additional resources:

Works on set and lighting design are generally shelved in this call number range: PN2085 - PN 2098.

Works relating to costume design are generally shelved in these call number ranges: GT507 - GT2282, PN2067 - PN2071, TT490 - TT679.