FASH 1091 History of Costume

30,000 + images. Narrow by Object type and Date/Era. Date ranges are broad so pay close attention to the date the item was made.

Original fashion plates from some of the leading French, British, American, and other continental fashion journals of the 19th century and early 20th century

The Internet Archive offers over 20,000,000 freely downloadable books and texts. There is also a collection of 2.3 million modern eBooks that may be borrowed by anyone with a free archive.org account.

An illustrated periodical published between 1809-1829. It included articles on a wide variety of topics, but focused on fashion, architecture and literature. Useful for Regency Era fashion plates.

Digital copies of books including millinery, dressmaking, clothing and costume books from the UW-Madison collections. These books are from the first half of the 20th century.

Do an advanced search and choose Type of Object.

Digital collection of four historic costume books. Illustrates aspects of dress from the mid-18th century to the mid-19th century.

Not a clothing history site, but provides access to millions of photographs from the LIFE magazine archives including photographs that document costume and fashion history

55 books from the Met Costume Institute that are free to read, search and download.

Over 5000 pieces including costume and set designs. Documents 150 productions of Shakespeare and modern classics dating from 1932 to 1976

Costume-related publications from the late 19th and early 20th century including “historical surveys as well as manufacturers' booklets and sample swatch catalogs.”

Toronto Public Library owns more than 4500 stage designs including both costumes and sets. It is the largest collection of its kind in Canada.

A fashion first, downloadable desktop application that showcases almost five decades of Valentino's work, drawing on a database of over 180 videos and 5000 images, including original sketches. Users can navigate a series of immersive galleries, organised by theme and rendered in 3-D, that in the physical world would stretch over 10,000 square meters.

good source of vintage clothing images- images generally show the pattern envelope and not individual pattern pieces.

The largest digital source of stories and experiences shared by Canada’s museums and heritage organizations