Research Guides: THTR 1500: Intro to Production Design: Costume Design

Costumes Design - Advanced Research

Your costume research should include use primary, historical research as well as evocative research images.

For historical research, start with books on 20th cen. - or more specifically 1940s - fashion for Talley's Folly:

The 1940s: Fashion Sourcebook by John Peacock
Call #: 391.009044 P356N
Publication Date: 1998
Costume drawings of women's and men's clothing from 1940 to 1949.
Evening Dress 1900-1940 by Marco Tosa
Call #: 391.009 T713E
Publication Date: 1988
A world history of evening dresses, beginning with the 19th century through La Belle Epoque, the languid tango, the impetuous Charleston, right through the fabulous '30s.
The Complete Fashion Sourcebook by John Peacock
Call #: LOWER LEVEL 391.009 P356C3
Publication Date: 2006
Men's Fashion: The Complete Sourcebook by John Peacock
Call #: 391.1 P356M
Publication Date: 1996
Comprehensive record of fashion accessories throughout the 20th century with over 2000 full-color drawings.
20th Century Fashion: The Complete Sourcebook by John Peacock
Call #: 391.009 P356T
Publication Date: 1993
Comprehensive and detailed history and sourcebook of 20th-century fashion with over 1100 full-color illustrations.
Fashion Accessories: The Complete 20th Century Sourcebook by John Peacock
Call #: 391.009 P356F
Publication Date: 2000
Uses descriptions and over 2,000 full-color drawings to cover every kind of high-fashion male and female accessory for both day and evening wear.
Costume Since 1945: Couture, Street Style, and Anti-Fashion by Deirdre Clancy
Call #: 391.009 C587C
Publication Date: 1996
Captures the changes in mood and style of each era since World War II through fashion.

Everyday Fashions of the Forties by JoAnne Olian (Editor)
Call #: LOWER LEVEL 391.009044 E936
Publication Date: 1992
This book is a compilation of 122 fully illustrated and captioned pages selected and reproduced from rare copies of Sears catalogs of the World War II era.
1940s Fashion by Emmanuelle Dirix
Call #: OhioLINK
Publication Date: 2013
Decades by Cameron Silver
Call #: LOWER LEVEL 391.009 S587D
Publication Date: 2012
Ten chapters, each devoted to the iconic looks of a decade. Includes original designer sketches and patterns and photos of rare couture as styled decades ago and today.

Searching collections from museums, universities, and fashion institutes are also a good idea:

Kyoto Costume Institute Digital Archives
The KCI Digital Archives presents image and text information for approximately 300 objects in the collection, arranged in chronological order.

Texas Fashion Collection
Dedicated to the preservation and documentation of historically significant fashion from the College of Visual Arts and Design, University of North Texas.

The MET Costume Institute
The Metropolitan Museum of Art is one of the world's largest and finest art museums. Its collection includes more than two million works of art spanning five millennia.
Kent State University Gallery of Costume
The Kent State Museum contains important collections of fashion and decorative arts. Its eight galleries feature changing exhibitions of work by many of the world's great artists and designers.
Ad*Access
Over 7,000 U.S. and Canadian advertisements covering five product categories - Beauty and Hygiene, Radio, Television, Transportation, and World War II propaganda - dated between 1911 and 1955.

Artstor on JSTOR This link opens in a new window
Artstor is a digital library of high quality images from leading museums, photo archives, scholars, and artists around the world, covering all areas of the arts, architecture, humanities, and sciences.
The ARTstor Digital Library also includes a set of software tools to view, present, and manage images for research and teaching purposes. New collections monthly from 200+ contributors, ranging from Egyptian and other Ancient Art to The Museum of Modern Art, and from Cook's Voyages to the South Seas (Natural History Museum, London) to Eyes of the Nation: A Visual History of the United States (Library of Congress) (www.artstor.org/collections)