Costume & Textile Collections

Searchable database of 18,000 garments, textiles, and related artifacts.

With over 50,000 costumes and textile artifacts from the mid-18th century to the present, the Chicago History Museum Costume Collection is the second largest in the world and one of the nations most complete repositories of fashion. About 400 costume / accessories objects are online.

This collection was founded in 1989 and has grown to more than 6,000 items.

There are over 120,000 objects the CH's online collection, of specific interest may be there textiles and wall coverings departments. But you'll find an array of fashionable design items here as well, such as perfume bottles, fashion plates, and make-up accessories.

A searchable database but in Spanish only.

A searchable image database comprised of selected fashion from the Robert and Penny Fox Historic Costume Collection (FHCC).

You can explore 1,347,407 objects from 32 different museums. The Nordiska museet is of note for its numerous costume items.

Europeana Fashion is a consortium composed of 22 partners from 12 European countries and includes more than 700,000 fashion-related digital objects ranging from historical dresses to accessories, photographs, posters, drawings, sketches, videos, and fashion catalogs.

Browse a selection of objects from the Fashion Museum collection, or search the selection for a specific term using the search box or menus.

A blog of items from the FIDM costume collection with good tagging to assist with search.

This page contains a brief department description and then the museum collections are searchable by keyword.

A historical timeline is provided in French only.

Searchable database of 7,000 objects, including approximately 800 color images with detailed descriptions. Collection can also be browsed by costume themes such as clothes for work or sports and leisure.

This online collection is nicely organized into themes, such as identity, occasion, or construction. The selection of objects found in this digital gallery offers a small glimpse of the entire collection.

Use the search field to find textile and fashion arts.

An online collection of clothing objects from the University of New Hampshire Dimond Library.

This museum of fashion, textiles, and related arts organizes a online Gallery of Costume. A searchable database is in the works.

The KCI Digital archives make 200 collection items available online. They are listed in chronological order and accompanied by images. Photographs shown with a plus sign on the lower right corner contain detailed descriptions and historical background information.

Highlights of the department of Costume and Textiles. Browse by date, designer, subject, type of artwork, and technique.

Objects from the Costume Institute and the Antonio Ratti Center are searchable in the Met's online database of over 400,000 objects.

This online collection of Canadian dress contains 982 items of costume and accessories in a searchable database that includes extended object information.

Over 1040 of our best objects are searchable by keyword and category.

The MFA owns more than 27,000 objects ranging from American needlepoint to European tapestries, Middle Eastern rugs, African kente cloths, and haute couture fashions.

The Collections Online contain over 7000 dress and textiles items, of both New Zealand and overseas origin. The Dress Collection consists of women's, men's, children's, and infants clothing and accessories from the eighteenth century to the present day. A keyword search of 'dress' returns over 4600 objects, many with downloadable images.

There are 953 online objects from this Smithsonian collection that includes everything from wedding gowns and military uniforms to Halloween costumes and bathing suits.

Type 'costume' in the search field to pull up just under 200 objects from cultural institutions of Newport, Rhode Island. Of note is the Rough Point Collection which features the wardrobe of Doris Duke.

This online collection features 140 costume and accessory objects from the Museum's collection.

5454 costume and accessory objects from the Museum's collection of over 227,000 are available in the online collections database. This information changes weekly as objects are added, updated, and enhanced with current research.

Australian museum with an interactive database that has extensive costume content and zoomable images.

The Dutch museum has launched Rijksstudio, an online searchable platform for their collections with a very liberal open-use policy. All hi-resolution images that you may use as you like.

Search the collections of the largest textile and costume collection in Canada.

The University of North Texas, Texas Fashion Collection site contains a searchable database of approximately 1500 objects from their collection.

Collection overview, exhibition information, resources for educators, and more. Site also features helpful resource information regarding general textile care, preservation, and storage.

Site features a searchable database of 6,000 objects, downloadable desktop images, and information for textile owners. You may also browse by type, region, material, techniques or period.

The Costume and Textile Collection, comprising about 40,000 pieces, enjoys an international reputation and is the largest collection of its kind in the South. Although the History Center's primary collecting concentration is objects related to Richmond, the Costume and Textile collection's focus is broader, including items worn, used, made or sold in Virginia from the 1600s to the present.

Fashion, Jewellery, & Accessories Collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum. Highlights include Search the Collections, lots of Fashion and Jewelry Features (such as on ethical fashion, 1960s fashions, and corsets), and resources for using the collections to make things. Also, information on current and past exhibitions and Fashion in Motion catwalk.

Contains images of clothing worn in Michigan during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The items included derive from the collections of Wayne State University, The Henry Ford, Detroit Historical Society and Meadowbrook Hall.

The Zandra Rhodes Digital Study Collection provides unique open online access to images of 500 of the designer's iconic garments, for use in learning, teaching, and research.