Patterns and Guides
Sewing Patterns and Guides for Historical Clothing and Costumes
A collection of lots of resources for historical clothing and costume patterns and guides. Thanks to super-fan Lauren M. for recommending!
Museums & Exhibits
- FIDM Museum & GalleriesThe FIDM Los Angeles campus houses a Permanent and Study Collection of over 12,000 costumes, accessories, and textiles from the 18th century through the present day, including film and theatre costume. It is one of the largest such collections in the United States, and top designer holdings include Chanel, Yves Saint Laurent, Dior, and Lacroix. The FIDM Museum also houses the early Hollywood Costume Collection on loan from the City of Los Angeles, Department of Recreation and Parks.
- The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology (NYC)The Museum’s permanent collection now encompasses some 50,000 garments and accessories from the 18th century to the present. Important designers such as Adrian, Balenciaga, Chanel, and Dior are represented. The collecting policy of the Museum focuses on aesthetically and historically significant “directional” clothing, accessories, textiles and visual materials, with emphasis on contemporary avant-garde fashion.
- NYPL Digital Gallery: Dress and Fashion: Design and ManufactureSeveral rare and unusual published resources of interest to students of western dress and fashion from the 19th to the early 20th-century. Includes historical surveys as well as manufacturers' booklets and sample swatch catalogs.
- Victoria & Albert Museum (UK): Fashion Jewelery & AccessoriesThe collection covers fashionable dress from the 17th century to the present day, with the emphasis on progressive and influential designs from the major fashion centres of Europe. The V&A collections also include accessories such as jewellery, gloves and handbags.
- ARTstor This link opens in a new window
Provides access to more than one million images in the arts, architecture, humanities, and social sciences.
- Bloomsbury fashion central This link opens in a new window
Comprised of the Berg Fashion Library which provides access to a searchable portal of integrated text and image content on world dress and fashion throughout history and the Bloomsbury Fashion Business Cases which provides real-world cases on challenges facing the business of fashion.
- Dance in video This link opens in a new windowDance in Video provides online access to hundreds of hours of dance productions, as well as dozens of documentaries, interviews, and instructional videos. The collection features some of the most influential companies and artists of the twentieth century, and includes a diversity of styles: ballet, tap, jazz, contemporary, experimental, and improvisational. Search criteria can include role, genre, ensemble, time period, venue, date of recording, and more. Available features include custom playlists and clips, permanent URLs, and viewing on mobile devices. Alexander Street Press
- Digital theatre plus This link opens in a new window
Provides high-definition recordings of top British theatre, music, and dance productions. A collection of interviews offers insights on acting, directing, design, and tech theatre.
- Theatre and drama premium This link opens in a new window
Provides searchable and browsable access to a variety of theatre arts related materials including all aspects of theatre and performance. Includes access to full-text plays, audio plays, filmed stage performances, documentaries, and other video content, contextualizing materials (designs, reference, and ephemera) including recent broadway productions and previously unpublished plays. Covers key writers, creators, and performers. Includes full content of the following collections: Drama Texts Collection Contemporary World Drama Black Drama: Third Edition Twentieth Century Drama: Second Edition Theatre in Performance Collection The BroadwayHD Collection The Royal Shakespeare Company Collection Theatre in Context Collection Performance Design Archive Online. Uses Alexander Street /ProQuest interface).
- Theatre in Video This link opens in a new windowCovers a wide range of 20th century theatre history with online streaming video. Includes live television broadcasts of New York productions from the 50s, revivals of classic works and experimental performances from the 60s and 70s, as well as important contemporary performances. Also includes new, international, and contemporary performances, ground-breaking documentaries, and critical instructional series for theatre and drama programs across the globe, including many new performances from Shakespeare's Globe Theatre collection (Opus Arte), Theatre Arts Films, the BBC, and TMW Media Group. Unlike Hollywood adaptations, these are the actual original productions, captured and recorded while performed for a live theatre audience. Plays range from classical Greek to the 20th century. Alexander Street Press
- NYPL Digital Collections: Vandamm theatrical photographs, 1900-1957Documents three decades of theatrical history in New York (Digital Collections of New York Public Library)
- Vogue archive This link opens in a new window
A complete searchable archive of Vogue (U.S. edition), from the first issue in 1892 to the current month.
