LibGuides: Theatre Research Guide: Costume Design

Berg Fashion Library

Berg Fashion Library This link opens in a new window
The Berg Fashion Library provides access to the Berg Encyclopedia of World Dress and Fashion, e-books, e-journals, a museum directory, reference works, images, foundational works on fashion across the globe, since 1600. The database is updated 3 times a year. A specially-created taxonomy allows users to refine by place, period, themes, textiles and more.

Historical Newspapers

These historical newspaper databases contain full image scans of advertisements, artwork, and illustrations from newspapers and magazines. These may be of interest for graphic design, costume design, folk art, or other artists.

Select by document type or document feature to find images.

American Periodicals Series This link opens in a new window
The American Periodicals Series brings the early days of U.S. history alive through more than 7,000,000 digitized page images from over 1,000 periodicals spanning 200 years. The wide variety of content ranges from Benjamin Franklin's General Magazine, first published in 1741, to literary and professional journals, specialized titles, and such well-known magazines as Vanity Fair, Ladies' Home Journal, Scientific American, and The Dial.
British Periodicals This link opens in a new window
This resource offers facsimile page images and searchable full text for nearly 500 British periodicals published from the 17th through the early 20th centuries. The library's account includes all four collections released by ProQuest as of 2019.

Library Resources

ARTstor This link opens in a new window
Use the advanced search feature to not only search for digital images of clothing, but to also search for portraits by area and time period.
Kanopy Streaming Service This link opens in a new window
Browse by subject to find videos on fashion and/or performance art.
Academic Video Online (Alexander Street) This link opens in a new window
The Theatre section contains performances of works by American, European, Asian, and other worldwide dramatists, along with documentaries and interviews about theatre, discussing the history of theatre, acting methods, pioneering dramatists and actors, and more.

Free Online Resources

Bettmann Archive
A compilation of Dr. Otto Bettmann’s life’s work and the United Press International Photo Archive, the Bettmann Archive offers stock photographs from the 19th and 20th centuries
Motley Collection of Theatre & Costume Design
Digitized images of materials housed in The Rare Book and Manuscript Library of the University of Illinois. They include costume and set designs, sketches, notes, photographs, prop lists, storyboards, and swatches of fabric.
National Portrait Gallery
Over 70,000 digitized images of portraits from England's National Portrait Gallery. Use the Advanced Search to search by location, person, artist, and more.
Victoria and Albert Museum
A working database providing online access to over 1.1 million catalog records and over 293,000 images of objects in the collection. Records vary in quality and reliability.
Costume Collection at the Museum of the Fashion Institute of America
Digitized images from the 18th Century to the present. Browse or search.
Open F|S
The complete digitized collections of the Freer and Sackler Galleries and the Freer Study Collection, the National Museums of Asian Art at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C.
Life Magazine
Google has scanned the entire run of Life Magazine and makes it freely available as part of its Google Books database.
Getty Search Gateway
The Getty makes available, without charge, all available digital images to which the Getty holds the rights or that are in the public domain to be used for any purpose. No permission is required. Please use the following source credit when reproducing an image: Digital image courtesy of the Getty's Open Content Program.

HathiTrust

HathiTrust
HathtiTrust Digital Library contains millions of titles of digitized books many of which are in the public domain. Use this resource to find books and journals written during your play's time period to find images and descriptions of period dress.

To best find items in HathiTrust use the advanced search feature to search for terms like: (clothing or dress) AND your location, then limit by a specific date range. Once you find a promising book, use the thumbnails view to quickly scan the book for images.