Historical Costume Resources

Carlson, Marc. Footwear of the Middle Ages – Shoe Design List/Tudor Era (c1450 – 1550). January, 2006 http://www.personal.utulsa.edu/~marc-carlson/shoe/SLIST5.HTM
Patterns have been taken from actual shoes or from period research. Construction information is a bit thin, but the pattern shapes are very helpful.

Cipolla, Maria Adele. Arteinscena Atelier. January 2006.
http://www.arteinscena.it/Arteinscena%20Atelier%20Patterns.htm
Maria Cipolla will create custom patterns for historical garments. She uses PatternMaker Software and will include construction directions as well. Most of the site is in Italian, but Maria speaks and writes English.

Harrington, James. Dressmaking Research: Harper's Bazar 1890's. January,2006. http://dressmakingresearch.com/harper's_bazar.htm
James Harrington has done a fabulous job of extracting individual patterns from the vintage multi-pattern sheets. Four dresses from 1897 are available in .pdf format on his website. He has CDs available with primary research materials in .pdf format.

Ladnier, Penny. The Costume Gallery. February 2006.
http://www.costumegallery.com/
This site contains resource materials dating from 1804 to 1923. Access to the library requires a subscription which ranges from $15.00 for 3 months to $55.00 for a year.

Leed, Drea. Elizabethan Corset Page . January 2006.
http://costume.dm.net/corsets/index.html
Drea Leed has created a site that contains a wealth of Elizabethan corset information. There are directions for drafting a corset as well as construction information.

Pepin, Harriet. Modern Pattern Design . VintageSewing.info. January 2006.
http://www.vintagesewing.info/index.html
This site contains the entire text of Harriet Pepin's 1942 book on pattern making. The bodice drafting directions produce a sloper that fits nicely.

Renaissance Tailor. February, 2006.
http://www.vertetsable.com/index.html
This site contains scans and re-drawings of tailoring books 1580 – 1648.

Ringling Collection. Feruary, 2006
http://web.uflib.ufl.edu/digital/collections/theatre/Ringling/index.htm
The Ringling Collection is a searchable archive of images from the 19th Century. This images are available in high quality formats and may be used as long as the source is cited.

Maginnis, Tara. Costume Sites on the WWW #4 : Period Pattern Research and Commercial Patterns. http://www.costumes.org/computer/1pages/CostumeSites4.htm
Tara Maginnis has done an enormous amount of work to develop this listing of costume source material.

Sardo, Julie Zetterberg. The Costume Page. February 2006.
http://www.costumepage.org/
This site has been in existance since 1995 and contains links to many costume resource materials. It was updated in 2004.

University of Virginia Collection of Historic Dress, Dedicated to Lois Garren. February 2006
http://cti.itc.virginia.edu/~dress/
Kathryn Rohe and Gwen West, along with the students of the University of Virginia, are to be commended for the remarkable work they have done to make the Lois Garren collection available to the public. The site contains photographs of the garments with a brief description.