Research Guides: Actors Page: Pictorial Research & Costumes

Pictorial Research & Costumes

Fashion and Costume Studies
by Giana Ricci Last Updated Jun 10, 2025 752 views this year

Hungarian traditional dressing (XIX century). Young peasant woman from Neograd. published on 1831. Author: Luigi Giarrè (died in 18?) and Vincenzo Stanghi (died on 1860).

Studies in costume & performance.
This journal aims to encourage, generate and disseminate critical discourse on costume and the relationship between costume and performance. It considers costume as a symbiotic articulation of the body of the performer which is visual, material, temporal and performative.

Photographs

Warning: finding photographs in the Catalog can be tricky!

Try the suggestions listed below:

To find images within books in the Catalog
- go to the search box and click on "advanced"
- enter the topic in the first box limited to "Anywhere in the Record"
- in the second box enter either "illus." or "ill." (for illustrations) or "Plates" or "col." (for color plates) or "ports." (portrait) also "Anywhere in the Record"

Additional Tips:

Subject AND pictorial works
- ex. Russia AND pictorial works
Subject AND Century AND pictorial works
- ex. 19th century AND pictorial works
To find Illustrated Histories enter:
- illustrated history of country
To see production photographs you could also try:
- Theatre World is a good place to find images of productions
- Ref1 PN2277.N5 A17

Locating Images

Google Images
New York Public Library Digital Gallery
Explore 879,491 items digitized from The New York Public Library's collections. This site is a living database with new materials added every day, featuring prints, photographs, maps, manuscripts, streaming video, and more.

You can find more image links on the Theatre LibGuide under "Finding Images/Videos"

Creative Commons
You should always verify that the work is actually under a CC license by following the link.
AP Images
Museum of the City of New York
over 15,000 images of theatrical production are now freely accessible online through the Museum’s Collections Portal
Library of Congress American Memory
Online access to print, pictorial and audio-visual collections and other digital services
New School Digital Collections
New School Fashion Design Collections

ARTstor
ARTstor is a repository of images of art, architecture, and design. The images are sourced from museums, libraries, archives, and photographers. ARTstor includes a suite of software tools to view, present, and manage images for research and teaching. ARTstor is supplemented by additional content, including publicly available image collections and locally-produced NYU collections.
Artstor has merged with JSTOR. You can now search for Artstor images through the JSTOR platform. This link directs you to the JSTOR image search.

In order to download images, users must create an account.

Videos Online

Need costume ideas? Try these videos:

American History in Video
American History in Video provides the largest and richest collection of video available online for the study of American history. The collection allows students and researchers to analyze historical events, through commercial and governmental newsreels, archival footage, public affairs footage, and important documentaries.

America at Work, School, and Leisure, 1894-1915
Work, school, and leisure activities in the United States from 1894 to 1915 are featured in this presentation of 150 motion pictures

Theatre in Video
Contains more than 250 performances of the world's leading plays, together with more than 100 documentaries, all in streaming video.
Criterion Collection
The Criterion Collection, an imprint of Janus Films, 315 of Criterion’s most influential films. Content covers the history of cinema throughout the 20th century, from early silent films like Charlie Chaplin’s The Gold Rush (1925) to releases from contemporary filmmakers like Gus Van Sant and Guillermo del Toro.
Paley Center Seminars
The Paley Center Seminars is an exclusive video collection of interviews with celebrities, television crews, and distinguished panels.
Dance Online: Dance in Video
Contains 250 dance productions and documentaries by the most influential performers and companies of the 20th century. Selections cover ballet, tap, jazz, contemporary, experimental, and improvisational dance.
Music Online: Opera in Video
Contains 250 of the most important opera performances, captured on video through staged productions, interviews, and documentaries.

Movietone News Archive
Clips from Movietone Newsreels illustrate events from specific dates in history. Register to use Movietone.

Fashion Databases

A cultural history of dress and fashion in the modern age
A Cultural History of Dress and Fashion in the Modern Age presents essays on textiles, production and distribution, the body, belief, gender and sexuality, status, ethnicity, and visual and literary representations to illustrate the diversity and cultural significance of dress and fashion in the period

Bloomsbury Fashion Central
Access includes the Berg Fashion Library, Fairchild Books Library, the Fashion Photography Archive, Bloomsbury Fashion Video Archive and Bloomsbury Fashion Business Cases. Content is peer reviewed by industry and academic experts and includes interconnected major reference works, exclusive articles, scholarly eBooks, case studies, biographies, lesson plans, bibliographic guides, textbooks, video content, runway and backstage photos from fashion shows, and images from museums around the world.
Fashion Studies Online: The Videofashion Library
The Videofashion Library brings vivid video capturing the many faces of fashion. It compiles nearly 40 years of worldwide fashion shows, designer profiles, documentary segments
Vogue Archive
The Vogue Archive contains the entire run of Vogue magazine (US edition), from 1892 to the current month. Every page, advertisement, cover and fold-out has been indexed so that images can be found by garment type, designer and brand names.
Women's Wear Daily Archive
Women’s Wear Daily Archive is the only digitized source of the entire run of Women’s Wear Daily (also known as WWD) covering 1910 to the present year. (There is a 6 month delay due to the publisher's restriction). Women’s Wear Daily Archive traces day-to-day news, opinion, and socio-economic trends, from runway reports to beauty product reviews.