How to Research Fashion History
Today's post How to Research Fashion History from Vintage Dancer.
** Republishing this today since there seems to have been an issue with it last week. My apologies if you received this post already.
Books
The library: While today’s students start with a web search for information, back in my student days we the Library. Books at the library are a great pace to start, and a better place to look than Amazon.com, because most are out of print. Fashion history doesn’t change too much so yesterday’s books are still useful to researching today. The closer the book publication date to the decade you are researching the better the information, in my experience. An author who writes from her/his own memory is more in tune with fashion that was actually worn. Be sure to look at not only general fashion history books but books on specific sub topics such as lingerie or swimwear. The later often have better, more detailed, information. General history books rarely cover everyday fashions, only fashion designers or big fashion defining pop culture movements.
Books like this “1920′s Fashion Sourcebook” can be very useful to researching even if its mostly pictures like this one.
Looking at library books under “fashion history” or “costume history” is the most obvious place to start. After you have devoured those areas take a look at general history books that may have chapters on fashion or just about life in general during the decade. I often find the most interesting information is in chapters on pop culture, advertising, TV and movies. Next look at women’s history. Sadly men’s history books don’t usually cover clothing but women’s usually does. Finally look at the “craft and sewing” or “beauty and makeup” section. Often there will be books with chapters on dress making history, textiles, or makeup history. When you have exhausted your local library’s collection expand to other public libraries. It is not a well know fact that most libraries can get any book at any library, around the world, as long as it has been in publication for at least 6 months. Many library’s offer this service for free or for a small cost. The book usually arrives to you in a week or so and you can keep it for just a few weeks. Use your libraries reference desk to find out how to search other libraries or use www.worldcat.org. Google books also has a “find in library” search option that is helpful. Once you have the name of the book, author, and publisher, your library should be able to get the book for you. Tip: When searching any library’s catalog use the search feature “find nearby books” to get a better return than say just looking only at results for “1920s fashion.”
Library of Books! Heaven for a researcher.
University or Private Libraries – Since university students are at school to learn and conduct research I find their libraries more helpful than local public libraries. They often have historic books, a bigger selection of books, catalogs, magazines (like Vogue) and other hard to find sources. Their reference desk if often (but not always) better trained in research too. While you may or may not be able to get an account and check out books you can usually look at any book or magazine they have on site. Bring lots of cash to make photo copies to take home or use you camera phone to take pictures of each page (or both!) One of my favorite types of books to look at in a University library are Yearbooks. Talk about a photo journey back into fashion’s past! The images are very useful for seeing what students and faculty actually wore and the head-shots are perfect for studying hair and makeup. Museums – If you are lucky enough to live nearby a costume or textile museum than you have a wealth of information most libraries wont have. Museums collect books but also original magazines, newspaper articles, photographs, and especially local fashion history. Some general history museums will also have a collection on fashion too. Call and find out before stopping by. Often these old records are viewable by appointment only.
1940′s Beauty Guide.Click to buy your own copy.
Used book stores- Every so often I browse through used book stores, thrift stores, antique malls and online used book sellers to find cheap old books and magazines to buy. I have found vintage catalogs, fashion history books, and cultural history books that have all been useful to my research. My latest find is a 1940′s mail order “Beauty Course” that is full of advice on how to dress your figure type, apply makeup, exercise and have good hygiene. The later two are not as useful as the first two but they sure do make a funny read!
Beauty courses and booklets have great fashion information as well as textbooks. Back in the day girls were taught classes in home economics that included buying clothing on a budget, recognizing types of materials, how to choose flattering styles, and what a typical wardrobe should include. These books are a goldmine of cultural and fashion history! Textbooks on textile production can also be useful to understanding the types of materials referenced in catalogs that we have no understanding of what they mean today. What is lisle, for example.
Curious what books are in my collection?
My favorite online used book sellers:
half.com – Sister site to ebay. Mostly newer books but some oldies too. Amazon.com – has some old books being sold by direct sellers. They are hard to search for. They are my main source for new books, but again hard to search for. I find more books doing random unrelated searches or from recommendations from other bloggers than I find in a search for “fashion history.”
abebooks.com - My favorite source. Use the “search by publication date” feature to find books in your decade. When you find something, google the title, to be sure it’s not being sold elsewhere for less.
www.biblio.com - Another site like Abebooks. Not as good, but worth a look. ebay.com – Ironically not my favorite place to search for books, but I often find books by specific title here.
Magazines, Newspapers
Outside of books, fashion history is best sourced in smaller publications. You can search databases of articles (both Academic/scholarly or general interest.) Different libraries subscribe to different databases. Some you can access free online, some you have to
Photograph books and articles so you can remember what you read!
login into the library system in person to search. Some only have article excerpts while others have the full article. Those that only have the article excerpts can be requested, just like you can with ordering a book.
Searching articles is a beast of a process. I much rather search books, but given a few hours and using a lot of different search keywords, I often will find some great articles.
Keyword research is key to finding the best articles: Searching for “1920s fashion history” wont yield many results or very good ones. Searching for “clothing,” “clothes,” “costume,” “wardrobe”, “dress”, “suits”, “hats” “beauty” ect will give you better results BUT you still need to narrow them down. You can try adding the decade to the search ie “1920s” but also try “1921″ “1922″ “1923″ etc. Articles will often include exact years not general decades, especially in older documents. For original sources try adjusting the publication year to the decade you are researching plus a few years. For 1920s, narrow your years to 1919-1932. Articles published shortly after the decade ends are usually about fashions of the recent past not necessarily the publication year.
Besides keywords you can search for specific publications. Vogue magazine, McCalls Magazines, Women’s Daily, etc. If you are familiar with publications in your decade of research you can browse through all the articles within your decade and find the ones that pertain to fashion. Tedious, yes, but if you love the thrill of the hunt, it’s very fun!
Catalogs
1933 Montgomery Wards Catalogs. The best source for everyday fashions!
If its wasn’t for vintage shopping catalogs I don’t know if half of my articles would be as well researched. There is not a better source for real everyday clothing history than to look at catalogs. Sears and Montgomery Wards are the biggest name brands but other retail stores, now out of business, are just as good (and cheaper to buy.) In my collection I have catalogs from Belle Hess, Simpsons, Aldens, Etons, and Nationals. I am on the hunt for some Lane Bryant catalogs currently. I buy my catalogs on ebay.com and etsy.com. They are not cheap. $30-$60 is what I usually pay, Anything more and I just wait for another listing. If you don’t have the budget to buy catalogs, use your library or buy used copies on Amazon.com for the Fashionable%20Clothing
A few of my vintage catalogs
What catalogs are best for are women’s morning and afternoon dresses, lingerie, shoes, men’s work clothes, suit, shoes and kids and teens clothes. What they lack are evening wear, wedding clothes, men’s hats, and specialty uniforms. Some trendy clothes like Zoot Suits in the 1940′s will also not be in catalogs. Men’s wear prior to the mid 20′s was also not well cataloged. Most men still went to their own tailors and haberdashers for clothing and hats. Menswear in catalogs sold underwear and sport clothing best.
For the few drawbacks catalogs have they are still my life saver. At times when I can’t find good information elsewhere, I will write an entire article just on what is included in catalogs. I try to get at least one catalog from the early, middle and late years and compare them to see how fashions changed. More than fashion history the descriptions and “selling points” of the clothing will tell you a lot about names of styles, preferred materials, colors, and trim as well as “why” a consumer will want this dress or another. The 1920s was all about coping New york style, the 1930′s on buying frugal, the 1940′s on looking patriotic, 1950′s on matching outfits, etc. Fascinating cultural history within a unlikely source!
Online Databases:
Despite the lack of good information that pops up in search results there are a number of good websites to find books and articles online:
http://www.hathitrust.org/ - An amazing database of articles. Some articles I was able to find online for free by searching for the title.
http://www.bergfashionlibrary.com/ - This is a useful membership site for scholarly articles. The cost is reasonable for the amount of information you can get.
http://www.gutenberg.org - Google’s project to digitize books in universities holdings. I have the worst time using the search feature but occasionally you can find some great stuff. Try searching http://books.google.com/ too for your “keywords.” The search will bring up excerpts from books both in the Gutenberg collection as well as current books that publishers allow text searches. Google books does link to some sources where the book is for sale online or in a library but I often find better results by searching the title and author in a web search.
archive.org - Another goldmine of information, when you can find it. Not the easiest to search. It also only has books that are out of copyright which roughly means books prior to 1923. They have video and audio too which is fun to watch/listen.
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/index.html - When you need photos to illustrate your research the Library of Congress is a good site. It’s a giant database of photos and historical documents that, although organized well, will still leave you searching page by page by page for the best images. You can narrow your search by date and topic, but after that you might want to expand you search back to just topic for some photos you might have missed. I always find new images every time I search. Some blogs are full of images, all out of copyright, with links back to the LofC listing. Try shorpy.com and http://sydneyflapper.tumblr.com/ (mostly 1920s/30s) Pinterest.com is also another good source of finding pictures. Copyright status is always “iffy” on Pinterest. For a school project you can use almost anything. Copyright law is a complicated beast. That is a topic for another post entirely.
Fashion History Websites:
I follow a few websites that focus on teaching or re-sharing fashion history. I am always seeking more so if you know of any not included here please leave a comment below:
fashion-era.com - A large collection of one fashion historian’s thoughts and sketches about all decades of women’s fashion history. A good place to start online.
http://www.wornthrough.com/ - An academic news source of whatever is going on in the academic fashion history world. I like their posts on new fashion history books and research papers available as well as fashion exhibits around the world.
http://blog.fidmmuseum.org/museum/ - Whatever the FIDM museum produces is worthy of following. Exhibits with matching exhibit books are excellent fashion history resources.
http://kickshawproductions.com/blog/ - Jonathan Walford is a fashion historian with a number of excellent books in publication. His blog is worth following for the few but very insightful articles he publishes.
http://witness2fashion.wordpress.com/ - My latest blog discovery is chalk full of fashion in detail. I have learned a great deal from this website and you will too.
http://www.gentlemansgazette.com/ - THE site for everything about men’s traditional fashion. Many detailed articles on men’s clothing history as well as a giant book list of men’s fashion books (both history and current dressing advise.)
http://twonerdyhistorygirls.blogspot.com/- Once a week these historical novel writers roundup links to some amazing history postings online. Not always about fashion, but fascinating non the less.
http://newvintagelady.blogspot.com/ - On Sunday is a roundup of catalogs scans from mostly the 30′s to the 50′s. Most are also women’s plus size fashions!
http://what-i-found.blogspot.com/ - A blog that showcase s”found” sewing patterns, articles and advertisements. Very interesting finds.
Fashion History on Google - I started an open group on Google to share fashion history articles and photos, both my own, and others I find online. Feel free to join the community and post any good sources you find too.
Phew! Well that’s about all I can say on researching fashion history. I am always learning new techniques so I will keep updating this article as I find new sources. Please share you tips and tricks in the comments below.
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