Skip to Main Content

Apparel, Merchandising, Design, and Textiles

Resources for research in apparel, merchandising, design, and textiles.

Internet Links

Costume

The Bata Shoe Museum  Features brief illustrated essays on footwear from ancient times to the present, with images.

La Couturiere Parisienne  Includes costume images from 1400 to 1939 with emphasis on Rococo Dress and late 19th and early 20th centuries.

18th Century Clothing at Colonial Williamsburg  Explains the basics of Colonial dress, with lots of images.

Elizabethan Costume Page  Includes information, drawings, and photos about clothing for peasant, middle, and upper class men, women, and children from the Tudor and Elizabethan periods (16th Century) in English history.

Europeana Fashion   Provides information about the history of European fashion, including more than 700,000 fashion-related digital objects, ranging from historical dresses to accessories, photographs, posters, drawings, sketches, videos, and fashion catalogues.

Fashion-Era  Focuses on fashion history, costume. clothing, textiles and social history.

Fashion Museum  Focuses on fashionable dress for men, women, and children from the 18th Century to the present.

Fashion: Past & Present Text and images on fashion and dress across historical periods.

Fashion. Victoria and Albert Museum  Covers fashionable dress from the 18th Century to the present day.

Fashion Plate Collection  Includes 417 fashion plates from 1806 to 1914 from some of the leading fashion journals of the time.

Footwear of the Middle Ages  Describes the history and development of footwear and shoemaking techniques up to the end of the 16th Century.

The History of Costume  Reproduction of a book of 500 full-color plates showing historical dress from antiquity to the end of the 19th Century.

Oriental Costumes: Their Designs and Colors. 1922  A reproduction of an important book covering the dress of Asia and the Middle East in both pictures and text.

Victoriana Magazine.  Victorian Fashion  Covers the 18th Century to the 1920s.

Databases, Indexes, Specialized Resources

Academic Search Complete

A comprehensive scholarly, multi-disciplinary full-text database, with more than 8,500 full-text periodicals, including more than 7,300 peer-reviewed journals. In addition to full text, this database offers indexing and abstracts for more than 12,500 journals and a total of more than 13,200 publications including monographs, reports, conference proceedings, etc.

Art Index

Provides abstracts and indexing of an international array of peer-selected publications—now with expanded coverage of Latin American, Canadian, Asian and other non-Western art, new artists, contemporary art, etc. 1982-present.

Art Index Retrospective

A unique resource, Art Retrospective helps users find contemporary criticism of art at the time of its debut, track the body of work of an artist or movement, find artists’ interviews and other commentary, and much more. 1929-1984.

Berg Fashion Library 

Provides integrated text and image content on world dress and fashion throughout history. Offers fully cross-searchable access to an expanding range of  Berg content collections, including the Encyclopedia of World Dress and Fashion, e-books, e-journals, museum directory, reference works, images, and more. Browsable by time,1600 to present, and by place.

Humanities and Social Sciences Index Retrospective

Contains references to articles from English-language journals in a wide range of interdisciplinary fields in the humanities and social sciences. 1907 - 1984.

Humanities International Index

Comprehensive database covering journals, books and other important reference sources in the humanities. Formerly the American Humanities Index, this database contains bibliographic records from a multitude of U.S. and international journals, books and reference sources. 1910-present.

MasterFILE Premier

Searchable full text of over 1,860 journals and periodicals covering a broad range of topics, including fashion, design, women's magazines and men's magazines.  1984-present.

National Geographic Virtual Library

Provides full text coverage of National Geographic from 1888-present. Also a separate part on People, Animals, and the World, including articles, full-text books and videos.

Readers' Guide Retrospective

Provides comprehensive indexing of the most popular general-interest periodicals published in the United States on a broad range of topics including fashion and design.  1890-1982.

Vogue Archive

The Vogue Archive contains the entire run of Vogue magazine (US edition), from the first issue in 1892 to the current month, reproduced in high-resolution color page images. Every page, advertisement, cover and fold-out has been included, with rich indexing enabling you to find images by garment type, designer, and brand name.

Vogue (Paris)

Full-text, digitized copies of the 1920-1940 issues of the French edition of Vogue.

Web of Science

Multidisciplinary database that indexes the Berg fashion and textile journals, among others.

WGSN formerly WGSN and Stylesight

Provides trend content, tools and technology for professionals in the fashion and style industries. Focuses on fashion, interiors, lifestyles, textiles, prints and graphics, color and vintage. Includes an image library and design resources in addition to forecasts.

WWD Online

Provides daily business news and key fashion trends to retailers, designers, manufacturers, marketers, financiers, and Wall Street analysts.

Electronic Reference Books

Arts and Humanities Through the Eras    Profiling milestones and movements in the arts, literature, music, and religion from a specific period, each volume in this five-volume set helps students and researchers understand the various disciplines of the humanities in relation to each other, as well as to history and culture.

Berg Encyclopedia of World Dress and Fashion  The Encyclopedia, a ten volume set, explores the dressed and adorned body across cultures and throughout history. It is illustrated with more than 2,000 images – many of which are unpublished, or rare.

Contemporary Fashion  Provides biographical and critical coverage of primarily U.S. designers, milliners, footwear designers, fashion companies and textile houses. Entries include a biographical summary; primary and secondary bibliography that includes articles and exhibition catalogs; and a signed, critical essay written by an expert in the field as well as photographs.

Encyclopedia of Clothing and Fashion  Survey of clothing, costume and fashion, presented through 640 essays, arranged alphabetically. 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.

Oxford Art Online  Provides access to Grove Art Online, the Benezit Dictionary of Artists, the Encyclopedia of Aesthetics, The Oxford Companion to Western Art, and The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art Terms, as well as many specially commissioned articles and bibliographies, along with images.

Oxford Reference Online Premium Collection    Provides access to over 180 dictionaries and encyclopedias including coverage of art, fashion, design, historical periods, and the full spectrum of subjects.

Print Reference Books

Mail-Order Catalogs

Sears Catalog.  Consult Search It record for specific years and locations.

Montgomery Ward Catalog.  Consult Search It record for specific years and locations.

Periodicals

The Delineator. Print volumes 1904-1937.  Consult Search It record for call numbers and locations.

Godey's Lady's Book.  Microfilm: Holland and Terrell Microfilm AP2 .A4991 reel no. 773-776, 862-865, 1840-1858; reel no. 865-875, 1859-1887.

Glamour.  Print volumes: Holland and Terrell TT500 G46, 1970-1978 and 2007-present.  Microfilm: Holland and Terrell Microfilm TT500 G46, 1950-2005.

Harper's Bazaar (print volumes).Consult Search It record for specific years, call numbers and locations.

Harper's Bazaar (online). 1867-1900.

Ladies Home Journal. Print volumes: Holland and Terrell AP2 L135, 1888-1948, 1970-present.  Microfilm: Holland and Terrell Microfilm AP2 L135, 1949-2006.

Life.  Print volumes: Holland and Terrell 805 L626, 1910-1936; Holland and Terrell AP2 L547, 1936-1972.

Mademoiselle.  Print volumes: Holland and Terrell AP2 M2334, 1935-1977.  Microfilm: Holland and Terrell Microfilm AP2 M2334, 1935-2001.

McCalls. Print volumes: Holland and Terrell AP2 M23, 1918-1977.

Vanity Fair. Print volumes: Holland and Terrell AP2 V33, 1924-present.

Vogue Archive. online. 1892 - present.

WSU Libraries, PO Box 645610, Washington State University, Pullman WA 99164-5610, 509-335-9671, Contact Us