Costuming for Stage and Screen

Stage and Theatre Design hub including articles and images from the collection.

Spanning four centuries, the V&A’s Fashion collection is the largest and most comprehensive collection of dress in the world.

Over 40,000 images.

The largest and most comprehensive textile and costume collection in Canada. Objects from cultures around the world, ranging from archaeological finds to contemporary designs.

The Clothing and Textiles Collection database contains over 18,000 object records. Some object records have more information than others.

Considered the leading collection of Canadian dress and the second most important collection of costume in Canada, this collection has grown since 1957 to contain some 18,845 items of dress and accessories. Among the plethora of women's dresses, parasols, hats, fans and footwear are many marvels created by some of Montreal's greatest 20th-century designers. The menswear in the collection includes suits, coats and accessories. Children's dress is also well represented. Finally, there is an important group of embroidered samplers, quilts and other textiles, including North America's oldest known patchwork quilt (1726).

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 nation’s most complete repositories of fashion.

Europeana Fashion is a best practice network co-funded under the CIP ICT-PSP program and composed of 22 partners from 12 European countries, which represent the leading European institutions and collections in the fashion domain. The consortium will aggregate and provide Europeana with outstanding and rich material about the history of European fashion, including more than 700.000 fashion-related digital objects, ranging from historical dresses to accessories, photographs, posters, drawings, sketches, videos, and fashion catalogues.

The Textile Museum of Canada's permanent collection contains more than 12,000 artifacts and spans almost 2,000 years and 200 world regions. This diverse collection includes fabrics, ceremonial cloths, garments, carpets, and quilts that reflect the cultural and aesthetic significance that cloth has held for centuries.

The Department of Textiles contains more than 13,000 textiles and 66,000 sample swatches ranging from 300 B.C. to the present. The collection has strengths in Pre-Columbian textiles, European vestments, tapestries, woven silks and velvets, printed fabrics, needlework, and lace. The department has strong holdings in 16th- and 17th-century English needlework, and printed and woven materials of the 18th and 19th centuries. American quilts and woven coverlets, Eastern textiles, and 20th-century fiber art are also represented.

The patterns on this site are in the public domain in Australia. All images and patterns on this site can be used for any commercial or non-commercial purpose without further permission.

To see over 40,000 costume images, choose "Object Type/Material" > Costume.

The world's largest decorative arts museum.

Amazing site which tours famous collections from around the world.

Digital Collections provide free access to a growing number of digitized items from the Research Library, Special Collections, Photo Archive, and Institutional Archives. These materials range from the 15th century to the present and include books, photographs, manuscripts, archives, and works on paper.

The website includes an excellent online source of images from the galleries collection and educational resources in the Cybermuse section.

The goal of the LAC portrait collection, the largest in Canada, is to document historical personalities important to Canada’s development. It includes work by Canadian and international artists. The portal features a selection of works from this collection.

A BC society and collection, "SMOC was founded in 1992 to collect historic fashion, traditional costume, and textiles to create a museum of historic fashion and fabric arts."