Research Guides: Fashion Merchandising: History

Explore Fashion History

Bloomsbury Fashion Central
Contains Berg Fashion Library, which provides cross-searchable access to interdisciplinary text and image content on world dress and fashion. Includes e-books, reference works, images, and more.
Women's Wear Daily Archive
The entire run of Women's Wear Daily (1910-6 months ago), a fundamental resource for the fashion industry, with searchable text. For access to the most recent content, please see our current subscription to WWD.
Vogue Archive
Image-rich primary source for the study of fashion, gender and modern social history. It presents a portrait of its era through photographs, articles, and advertisements. Contains every page of Vogue Magazine from 1892 to the present.

Harper's Bazaar
An example of general interest women's magazine with a long publication history (first issue published in 1867).

Design and Applied Arts Index (DAAI)
International index to articles in hundreds of design and craft journals. Also contains data on designers, craftspeople, studios, schools, workshops, and firms.

Fashion Design
More resources for fashion research.
The Fashion Plate Collection
From the University of Washington Libraries Digital Collections, it includes images from "leading French, British, American, and other continental fashion journals of the 19th century and early 20th century."

America: History and Life
Article abstracts and citations of literature covering the history and culture of the United States and Canada from prehistory to the present.

Advanced Search (VCU Libraries Search)
Search for books on fashion history. You can use terms like fashion history. Searching by decade is harder, but using a year or century may work (example: fashion history and 1800). You can also search by designer.