Library Guides: Theatre: Costume Design: Online Resources

The Professional Costume Designer

Costuming Internet Resources

Costume Page
Costumer's Manifesto
A wiki for sharing ideas and collaborating with other costumers
Daphne Dare Digital Exhibit
This collection includes costume and scene designs from more than fifty productions by British designer Daphne Dare (1929-2000). Dare designed for major theatres on both sides of the Atlantic as well as for television and film.
Dressing the Character
The Role of the Costume Designer
Elizabethan Costuming Page
This site, divided into 16 sections, focuses on a broad variety of topics related to clothing in the time of Queen Elizabeth I. Of particular interest are those entitled, "Portraits and Pictures" and "Regional and National Fashions."
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Useful to Renaissance enthusiasts and those involved with costuming!
Google Images: Costume History
This link performs the search described in the titles and provides a vast array of costume history-related images!
Helen Louise Allen Textile Collection
The mission of the Helen Louise Allen Textile Collection is to further "the understanding of human beings within their material and social environments through the study of textiles of artistic, cultural, and historic significance." It is primarily a teaching collection serving the University of Wisconsin-Madison's School of Human Ecology's Design Studies Department. It includes 13,000 textiles and related objects spanning spanning various places, techniques, and time periods.
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The Digital Collections database provides open access to images and cataloging information for almost 9,000 items in the HLATC. This unique trove is very useful for research and instruction in the study of textiles. The collection is especially strong in ethnographic textiles and costumes from all over the world, especially Latin American, African, South and Southeast Asian, and Turkish objects. It is also strong in 19th- and 20th-century American and European home furnishing and apparel fabrics. The database is fully searchable by keyword, title, subject, and geographic area. (Y. Cortes, Skidmore College for CHOICE)
Motley Collection of Theatre and Costume Design
The digitized version of the Motley Collection of Theatre and Costume Design is based on originals housed in the Rare Book & Manuscript Library at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The Motley Collection consists of over 5000 costume and set designs, sketches, notes, photographs, prop lists, storyboards, and swatches of fabric. The collection documents 150 productions of Shakespeare and modern classics, dating from 1932 to 1976, staged in England and the United States, from the West
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The majority of the collection has been digitized, and can be searched by play title, theater name, actor and director names, as well as medium. In addition, production notes have been compiled for selected plays; for example, a researcher interested in a 1954 production of A Midsummer Night's Dream can view excerpts of reviews, commentary from the set and costume designer, Margaret Harris, and a cast list including Vanessa Redgrave who played Helena.
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Stage Costume Collection (Victoria and Albert Museum)
An online collection from the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. The collection highlights stage costume designers, costume makers, and the costumes themselves.
Textile Museum
Tonic to the Imagination:Costume Design for Stage & Screen by B.J. Simmons & Co.,1889-1959
The B.J. Simmons & Co. costume shop in London produced costumes for theater and film, along with renting out costumes to such venues for over 100 years. The Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin has a web exhibition of 228 costume designs from over 60 productions from the span of 1889-1959.
Costume History
Western costume history by era and decade