Whether you are looking for examples of historical fashion to create a doll design, costume or fashion design or just for general inspiration you are not limited to the museums and collections that you may have nearby. You can browse the historical costume collections from institutions around the world by looking at their online catalogues, using the links below. And you can do it in your pyjamas. For free.
If you're new to the Magic Bean, every Friday I do a round-up of free craft tutorials on a certain theme. So stop by every Friday for your weekly dose of free crafts, patterns and tutorials. Or browse for more free resources by combing through the "Free Craft Tutorials & Patterns" category (just click the link) or use the Google Search function on the top left of my blog to search for something specific.
This March I am doing a special theme for the entire month, focusing on historical and vintage fashion, so even the links on Freebie Fridays will have a historical costume bent.
To start the month off right, here is a list of some of the best online collections of historical fashion:
The Bata Shoe Museum highlights several areas of their collection online.
Searchable database of 18,000 garments, textiles, and related artifacts. If you are a quilter, they also have a quilt collection.
Cornell Costume Collection
This collection only features the highlights of the collection however, their Treasures of the Cornell Costume Collection section does feature an exciting 3-D rotation and zoom capability.
Drexel Digital Museum Project
A searchable database of archival data and detailed graphics for the Drexel Historic Costume Collection, housed in the Antoinette Westphal College of Media Arts & Design, Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA.. In addition, this records items that were loaned to the project for inclusion in the database.
The Fashion Museum in Bath, Somerset holds items from as early as 1600. You can search using the date, material, name or category of costume.
FIDM Museum
Interestingly, this collection is shared via a blog with a different item shared with each post. The FIDM museum in Los Angeles, has categorised each posting so it is easier to find specific items. Just browse the Categories to find what you are looking for.
Gallery of Costume, Manchester City Galleries
Explore this searchable database by designer, type of clothing or material.
Indianapolis Museum of Art
Search this database by date, material or type. This collection features a lot of world dress and native American clothing and textiles.
Kent State University Museum: A Visual Dictionary of Fashion
This costume collection is divided into the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries.
The Kyoto Costume Institute
One of my favourite collections shares images of 200 items from its collection. It lists items in chronological order. You can click a timeline, complete with helpful silhouettes to see the items from that era. There is a fair amount of detail given for each item in the descriptions.
If like me, you love the look of this collection and want more costume inspiration to drool over, I can't recommend the book Fashion (Taschen 25th Anniversary)
Musee McCord Museum
With 18,845 items of costume and accessories from Canada this is considered the 2nd most important collection of costume in Canada. There is a searchable database that allows you to search by item type, date and even province.
Museum at FIT
A brand new online catalogue of costume is due in Spring 2012. It's not available quite yet, but look out for it.
Metropolitan Museum of Art - Costume Institute
Search through the collection of the museum using keywords, dates, locations, or designer. Or to browse the entire collection use the word "Costume Institute" to look through the holdings of the department. Photographs are accompanied by detailed descriptions.
Powerhouse Museum
This Australian museum allows you to search by clothing and dress and then select from the extensive listings. The clothing and dress items feature zoomable images.
Royal Ontario Museum
Search the collections of the ROM, using the Textiles and Costume category. Not the easiest of databases to search, but if you are happy to browse, then it may suit you just fine.
Texas Fashion Collection
Explore the University of North Texas, Texas Fashion Collection via their searchable database.
The Textile Museum of Canada
A searchable collection of 6,000 items that you can narrow down by type, region, material, techniques or period.
Victoria & Albert Museum
One of my favourite places, the Victoria & Albert Museum has a site that not only includes items from their collections of Fashion and Jewelry, but they also have articles on everything from fashion drawing to ethical fashion to a resource guide for teacher who want to use the collection.
If you'd rather not deal with a digital version of this museum's collection, then why not get yourself a book cataloguing men's and women's fashion from the V&A - 400 Years of Fashion
For Aspiring Fabric Designers
A few weeks ago I did a special Freebie Friday post all about colour and some free online tools that you could use to help you with using colour in your work. Here is another outstanding tool:
Powerhouse Museum's Electronic Swatchbook
A digital catalogue of almost 2000 fabric swatches from fabrics ranging in date from the 1830s to the 1920s. You can search by colour or by year.
If you are short on inspiration, then there must be something hiding amongst these links that is just crying out to turn into your next project. Can you hear it calling you?
Thank you Colleen. I appreciate your hard work in finding this information for us.
Elaine Allen
Posted by: Elaine Allen | March 03, 2012 at 01:34 AM
That is an amazing collection of collections. Who would have thought there would be so very many. Great research. Silly me, I didn't even know we had a Textile Museum in good old Hogtown. I am enjoying visiting all these wonderful places in whatever I am wearing and no admission.
Posted by: Kitty Babcock | March 03, 2012 at 01:06 AM