Illustration by Caroline Bautista

I recently found myself in front of 17 theater majors, all studying costume history in some regard. I was there to divulge the “secret” world of archival research to them, and point to the various resources they could investigate for their term papers. The assignment required them to find a primary source that depicted fashion from a particular era, one they could pinpoint and learn more about. The way this process breaks down is fairly simple: start with a decade or an era that intrigues you, take a look at what folks were wearing, dig deeper. Alternatively one could think of a piece of fashion that sticks out in their minds. They could choose to investigate corsets or belt buckles or fur coats. Mainly they needed to find a image of an item from fashion or costume inspiring enough to want to write a long paper about.

Though standalone fashion archives are hard to come by, there are extraordinary collections within institutions that collect a bit more broadly. In California, the various archives holding fashion collections are often sought after because of recognizable designer names (Edith Head, Bonnie Cashin). Film and Television in Southern California dictated a great amount of fashion trends but Hollywood is almost a blip when considering the wealth of change in fashion over time and on an international scale. And how has the study of fashion oscillated? As scholars uncover and study related primary sources, or even just those that depict the zeitgeist through clothing, how do they assert a throughline of objectivity? There are so many factors weighing on our reasoning for wearing certain things: trends, necessity, environment, era, available textiles, economics. When documenting and preserving fashion, the archivist is attempting to capture the art, craft, and purpose of the medium. The fluidity with which fashion evolves has made it so collecting on behalf of fashion archives can be a strong representation of history- not necessarily a quantitative depiction but perhaps more qualitative and idiosyncratic. The sketch and the garment are worlds apart in terms of material but seamlessly connected through content. The science behind the preservation of each is so distant, yet divorcing the physical objects from each other seems counterintuitive.

In addition to holding paper materials, some of these archives contain less recognizable formats. From textiles to full pieces, from sample books to mimeographed designs, they represent fashion design as both art and skill. This is not all the fashion collections, of course not, but it is perhaps a sizeable roundup worthy of further dissection.

Thierry Mugler. Installation View [Original work found in Museum at FIT]. (Original work created in Fall 1997).

(above) Brooklyn Museum Costume Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of the Brooklyn Museum, 2009; Bequest of Matilda Alice Shaw, 1948.

(right) Brooklyn Museum Costume Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of the Brooklyn Museum, 2009; Gift of H. Dunscombe Colt, 1960

Mccall. Dress [Original work found in Commercial Pattern Archive (CoPA), Rhode Island]. (Original work created in 1943)

Resources/collections/items of interest:

Fashion, Textile & Costume Librarians (blog) 

Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising Museum (blog)

Finding Fashion sources (a research guide from Otis College of Art and Design)

Bonnie Cashin Digitized Collection (From UCLA Library Special Collections)

Edith Head Papers (from the Margaret Herrick Library)

Fashion Librarian Resource Guide (from Pima Community College)

OAC Collections on Fashion Design

Hellen Louise Allen Textile Collection (from the University of Wisconsin-Madison)

Digitized drawings and fashion photographs (from the Chicago History Museum)

Digitized collections from the Motley Collection of Theatre and Costume Design (hosted by the University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign)