Research Guides: Fashion and Costume Studies: Databases

Digitized Magazine Archives

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.
GQ Archive
The GQ Archive is a searchable database of the US edition of GQ magazine from the first issue (published in 1931) to the present, with ongoing additions of new issues. Color page images and article-level indexing are available, with issues scanned from cover to cover.
Harper's
Harper's Magazine is a news and general interest monthly magazine, featuring news, essays, fiction, and more. The archive includes coverage from the beginning of publication in 1850 to present day issues.
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.
Women's Magazine Archive
Women's Magazine Archive is a searchable, primary-source archive of leading women's interest magazines dating from the 19th century through to the 21st. Some popular titles include: Cosmopolitan, Redbook, Essence, Ladies' Home Journal, and Good Housekeeping. It provides full-text access to the foremost consumer magazines aimed at a female readership, which serve as canonical records of evolving assumptions about gender roles and cultural mores. The magazines are all scanned cover-to-cover in high-resolution color, ensuring that the original print artefacts are faithfully reproduced and that valuable non-article items, such as advertisements, are included. Topics covered in this resource include family life, home economics, health, careers, fashion, culture, and many more.

Industry Reports and Analysis

WGSN
Fashion and design trend forecasting, reports, and consumer insights. NYU Libraries subscribe to the Insight, Fashion, and Lifestyle & Interiors modules.
Users must create an account using their NYU email address to access WGSN.
Stylus
Stylus produces market research reports on fashion and design, including cross-industry trends and consumer insights.
Business of Fashion
Business of Fashion (BoF) Professional provides access to news and newsletters, analysis and briefings, case studies, special reports, online learning resources, and more. BoF covers the global fashion industry, with detailed reporting on retail, luxury, tech, sustainability, marketing, beauty, events, and careers.
Users must create an account with their @nyu.edu email address. Check your spam folder if you do not see your account activation email. Add Business of Fashion as a contact to ensure you receive authentication emails and newsletters.
The Fashion Law
The Fashion Law database is a modern media and information company that explores the legal and commercial challenges facing the retail industry.

Databases

Arts & Humanities Database
Arts & Humanities Database features hundreds of titles covering Art, Architecture, Design, History, Philosophy, Music, Literature, Theatre and Cultural Studies.
Arts and Humanities Citation Index (A&HCI)
This database indexes about 1,700 arts and humanities journals. Dates of coverage: 1975 to present.
Adjust settings to expand your searching to include the Social Sciences Citation Index, the Science Citation Index, the Book Citation Index, and others.
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.
Bloomsbury Visual Arts
Bloomsbury Visual Arts is an interdisciplinary hub designed for research and learning across design, art, architecture and related fields.

NYU Libraries subscribe to following collections:
Bloomsbury Design Library
Bloomsbury Art Markets
Art, Race and Gender
Ceramics
Design Studies
Photography
Printmaking
Art Markets, Museums and Collecting
Contemporary Art
Global and Regional Art
Commercial Pattern Archive (CoPA)
The Commercial Pattern Archive database (CoPA) provides a unique tool for researchers and designers to recreate or date clothing from 1868 to 2000. The cornerstone of CoPA is the Betty Williams Collection. Betty Williams, a theatrical costumer in New York City, pioneered research on commercial patterns in the early 1980s. The Betty Williams Collection is now housed at the University of Rhode Island and is combined with the URI and Joy Spanabel Emery Collections in the Commercial Pattern Archive in URI Library Special Collections.
This resource requires a login. The username is: nyulibs and the password is UCRMBx2
Design and Applied Arts Index
Design and Applied Arts Index covers journal articles, exhibition reviews, and news published from 1973 to the present. DAAI surveys disciplines including ceramics, glass, jewellery, wood, metalsmithing, graphic design, fashion and clothing, textiles, furniture, interior design, architecture, computer aided design, Web design, computer-generated graphics, animation, product design, industrial design, garden design, and landscape architecture.
Mass Observation Online
Contains archives for the study of Social History in the modern era. Mass Observation was a pioneering social research organisation whose papers provide insights into the cultural and social history of Britain. The material at the Mass Observation Archive, and now on Mass Observation Online, offers insight into everyday life in the 1930s and 1940s including abortion, old age, crime, eating habits, shopping, fashion, dance, popular music, sex, sport, reading, ethnic minorities, and the decline of Empire.
Performance Design Archive Online
With the Performance Design Archive Online, theatre students and researchers can now truly see "behind the scenes" of the world's greatest dramatic performances. Performance Design Archive Online is the first comprehensive, international collection that covers all aspects of theater production design, from the 17th century through to the present day, including scenic and set design, lighting design, sound design, costume design, and makeup. Bringing together essential books and periodicals, archival material, and specially commissioned instructional videos, the collection will cover design concepts for a broad range of performance types, including dance, theatre, opera, and music.