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These museums from across the globe have collections specifically dedicated to accessories.
The Costume Institute's Irene Lewisohn Costume Reference Library (The Met)
American clothing accessories from buttons to outfits
The Costume Institute at the MET
The Costume Institute's collection of more than thirty-three thousand objects represents seven centuries of fashionable dress and accessories for men, women, and children, from the fifteenth century to the present.
The mission of the Museum is to collect, conserve, document, exhibit, and interpret fashion. The Museum’s permanent collection encompasses some 50,000 garments and accessories from the 18th century to the present.
Victoria and Albert Museum
From ancient Chinese ceramics to Alexander McQueen evening dresses, take an incredible journey through 5000 years of human creativity with our online collections
Bonnie Cashin Collection of Fashion, Theater and Film Costume Design, 1913-2000
Boston Museum of Fine Arts - David and Roberta Logie Department of Textile and Fashion Arts
Drexel University's Historic Costume Collection contains more than 7000 items and includes fashion plates, photographs, and 19th- and late-20th-century haute couture by French and American designers.
Europeana Fashion
The Europeana website provides cultural heritage enthusiasts, professionals, teachers, and researchers with access to Europe's digital cultural heritage
Metropolitan Museum of Art - The Costume Institute Online Collection
Smithsonian Institution Libraries Costume and Dress Collections
Check out these other related collections!
Slides of art and architecture via a database of the Albert Hoxie Slide Collection owned by the UCLA Department of History.
CoPA provides a unique tool for researchers and designers to recreate or date clothing from 1868 to 2000. The CoPA project electronically captures and records commercial pattern data in order to preserve these scattered and vanishing records of European and American culture. The Archive is an official project of Save America's Treasures.
Artstor
Over three million images, many from museum collections, searchable by keyword and browsable by medium, time period, etc. Register and log in to download JPEGs to your computer. Create your own details by zooming in and downloading JPEGs of zoomed-in views.
Bloomsbury Fashion Central
Contains the Berg Fashion Library, the full text of the Berg Encyclopedia of World Dress and Fashion, images, e-book and e-journal content related to fashion, and the Fashion Photography Archive. Browse chronologically and geographically, or search across 7000+ images.
Global Performing Arts Database
GloPAD (Global Performing Arts Database) records include authoritative, detailed, multilingual descriptions of digital images, texts, video clips, sound recordings, and complex media objects related to the performing arts around the world, plus information about related pieces, productions, performers, and creators. Approximately 4,500 objects are currently available. Much of this work was made possible by a major three-year grant (October 2002-September 2005) from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) through the Cornell University Library.
Vogue Archive
Every page of every issue of Vogue Magazine from 1892 to the present, digitized and indexed by photographer, model, author, designer, etc.
Harper's Bazaar Archive
Every page of every issue of Harper's Bazaar from 1867 to the present.
Nineteenth Century Collections Online: British Theatre, Music and Literature
Collections of digitized primary-source material from the long 19th century, including "British Playbills 1754-1882" and the "Drury Lane Theatre Archive." These rare documents, many of them never before available, were sourced from the British Library and other renowned institutions.
Yale University Library Digital Collections
Searches across digital images in Yale library collections, including the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, the Yale Visual Resources Collection, Manuscripts and Archives, the Yale Daily News Archive, and many others.
Watson Library Digital Collections from the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Digital images and publications from the Met's collections, including exhibition catalogs from the museum's history, rare books, and sketches, photographs, and fashion plates from the Costume Institute.
Folger Shakespeare Library Digital Image Gallery
Free and open access to over 50,000 digitized objects from the Folger Shakespeare Library's collections, including photographs, books, theater memorabilia, and manuscripts.
New York Public Library Digital Collections
Free and open access to over 800,000 digital images from the NYPL collections, including the Mid-Manhattan Library's Picture Collection.
Prints and Photographs Online Catalog, Library of Congress
Catalog of over 14 million items held by the Prints and Photographs division of the Library of Congress, with digital access to over 1 million items.
College Art Association: Image Sources and Rights Clearance Agencies
Listing of reputable sources of free images from libraries and museums, including many public-domain and open-access images.
Britannica ImageQuest
Search across millions of images from Britannica Digital Learning.
LIFE Magazine
Searchable, browsable digital versions of issues 1936-1972, hosted by Google.
Browsable collections of fashion and costume drawings and skecthes.
Brooklyn Museum Fashion and Costume Sketch Collection, 1912-1950
Guide to original artwork in the library's collection, including costume design. Not every record has images associated, but many designs are viewable online by noted film costume designers.
Smithsonian Institution Libraries Fashion and Clothing Collection
Digital image collections largely focused on textiles.
Part of the Department of Textiles and Apparel, this collection includes historical dress for men, women, and children from both America and from other cultures. Contains a fully searchable catalogue and gallery of selected items accompanied by explanatory text.
The Textiles Collection: University for the Creative Arts at Farnham
The Pattern Project is an online resource produced by the Costume and Textiles department at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) which publishes free downloadable garment patterns of historic dress in the permanent collection. Each printable PDF includes a scaled pattern of an extant fashion object from the collection, a description with historic context and object-based observations, overall and detail images, and instructions for construction of the garment.
Advances the global understanding of all aspects of dress and appearance through scholarship, study, symposia, and publications.
Encourages and supports the study of all aspects of clothing.
Dedicated to promoting the visibility and addressing the needs of African-American design professionals in graphics design/visual communications, interior design, fashion design and industrial design.
Serves the interests of textile specialists with symposia, publications, job postings, and links.
U.S. and Canadian ads from 1911-1955
The Character Shop
A special effects company specializing in animatronics, makeup effects, puppets, and robotics. Site includes glossary of special effects terms.
Costar Archives (Consolidated Clothing and Costumes Archives)
Hosted by the Costume Program in the Department of Dramatic Art at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
The Costume Gallery
Includes descriptions and images of period costumes. Also includes links to websites that provide goods and services to the fashion and costuming industry.
The Costumer's Manifesto (Tara Maginnis)
Links to many aspects of costuming and types of costume, from ancient Babylon to the 1990's, including ethnic costume. Features text and images. Including Make-Up and Mask Links.
Fashion Museum Collection, Bath UK
Godey's Lady's Book 
Digitized portions of the 19th century women's magazine containing fashion plates, illustrations, literature and other content deemed appropriate for women in the Victorian era; made available through The University of Vermont.
The Hair Archives
Vintage hair fashion.
Historic Clothing Collection Albert S. Cook Library Digital Collections: Towson University
Growing digital collection of clothing for women, men and children from the mid 19th century and 20th century.
The History of Costume by Brian & Schneider - c. 1861 - 1880 (C. Otis Sweezey)
Images of plates of historical dress from antiquity to the end of the 19th century, with a Victorian perspective. From the book originally published as "Zur Geschichte der Kostume," printed from 1861 to 1880 in Munich by the publishing firm of Braun and Schneider.
Kyoto Costume Institute Timeline
Images and text for 200 objects from the collection arranged in chronological order.
New York Public Library Digital Gallery
Many costume images including reproductions from Racinet's Costume Historique also....
Inside VIDCAT
Archival fashion videos from the 1950's to present
The Vintage Fashion Guild (VFG) is an international organization dedicated to the promotion and preservation of vintage fashion. They have many visual resources for fabric, vintage hats, and lingerie.
This collection has thousands of costume designs from 1932 to 1976 for plays by Shakespeare and modern classics, opera, ballet, and motion pictures
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