Costume Design

Internet resources on costume and fashion history can be problematic. Quality control remains a serious issue for sites that are built to feature costume history, and the actual number of such sites is limited. A majority of these sites have a commercial basis or creator. Therefore, the areas of contemporary fashion business, advertising, and haute couture are better represented online. Major designers often have their own sites.

• Theatre Productions and Players, 1920s-1957: Vandamm Studio Photographs
  The nearly 2,500 items in this digital presentation based in the New York Public Library are a sampling of an archive of more than 75,000 images of theatrical personalities and productions.
• Production Art Database
  Original artwork collected in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences library.
• Costume Collection at the Museum of the Fashion Institute of America

  The Museum’s permanent collection now encompasses some 50,000 garments and accessories from the 18th century to the present.
• The Costumer's Manifesto

  A wiki that offers extensive historical, geographical breakdown of costume history as well as accessories, uniforms, costume shops, dyeing, etc.
• Harper's Bazaar

  This open access database contains scans of all issues published between November 1867 – December 1900, with very few gaps.
• Costume at the Victoria and Albert Museum London
  Among the Theatre and Performance collections there are over 3,500 stage costumes and accessories - ranging from complete outfits to individual headdresses. All are a tribute to the creativity and skills of designers and costume makers from the mid 18th century to today, in every kind of live performance - drama, opera, dance, musicals, pantomime, rock and pop, music hall, cabaret, circus.
• Costume Institute and the Irene Lewisohn Costume Reference Library at The Metropolitan Museum of Art

  Texts and images from the collections of the Costume Institute and the Irene Lewisohn Costume Reference Library at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Please note that access to some material in this collection is restricted to computers within The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
• The Costume Page
• Elizabethan Costume Page
• The History of Costume by Braun & Schneider
• The Costume Society (U.K.)
• Costume Society of America