.
Costume and Fashion
- ARTstor This link opens in a new windowThis searchable repository of over 1.6 million high quality digital images offers tools for viewing, sharing, and saving visual materials. Although its strengths are visual art and architecture, Artstor includes images that are useful in both the humanities and the sciences.
- Bloomsbury Fashion Central This link opens in a new windowThis online portal offers access to reference articles, e-books, images, and other content relating to dress and fashion from across cultures and time.
- Costume History - Digital Image CollectionThe Costume History Collection, a database of over 450 images, was developed from the Abridged History of Costume by Beverly and Stephen Sbarge, eds. The collection contains images portraying various hairstyles, jewelry, and garments. These fashions range from the ancient Egyptian to contemporary styles from such designers as Gianni Versace and Calvin Klein.
- Folger Shakespeare Library Digital Image CollectionThe Folger's Digital Image Collection offers online access to over 30,000 images from the Folger Shakespeare Library collection, including costume. Images are available in high resolution and users can show multiple images side-by-side, zoom in and out to see fine detail, view cataloging information when available, export thumbnails, and construct permanent URLs linking back to their favorite items or searches.
- Historical Clothing Collection at Brigham Young UniversityThe Historical Clothing Collection consists of over 3,000 artifacts from the late 18th Century through the 1990s. This database provides access to digital images and information for the purpose of education and research.
- New York Public Library Dress & Fashion Digital Image CollectionImages from 19th and early 20th-century published materials on fashion.
- The History of CostumeThe History of Costume By Braun & Schneider - c.1861-1880 contains Victorian era fashion plates showing costume from antiquity to the late 19th century.
- The New York Public Library Mid-Manhattan Library Picture Collection OnlineMore than 30,000 digitized images from books, magazines, newspapers, original photographs, prints and postcards from the Picture Collection at the NYPL Mid-Manhattan Library. Most images date from before 1923. Includes historical images of costume and dress from around the world.
- University of Washington Libraries - Fashion Plate CollectionDatabase of over four hundred fashion plates from 19th and early 20th century magazines.
Not finding what you're looking for?
There are so many digital image collections that it is impossible to list them all on this guide. If you're not having luck with these resources, make sure to take a look at these other guides for finding images.
Using ARTstor (Tutorials)
Visit ARTstor on YouTube for tutorials about registering and using the database.