Research Guides: Fashion Design and Merchandising Research Guide: FASH 2150, Sociocultural Aspects of Dress

Find Articles & Images

Bloomsbury Fashion Central This link opens in a new window
The Berg Fashion Library contains the Berg Encyclopedia of World Dress and Fashion, reference works, ebooks, images, and museum exhibitions.
Vogue Archive This link opens in a new window
A searchable archive of American Vogue, from the first issue in 1892 to the current month, reproduced in high-resolution color page images.
WWD Archive This link opens in a new window
WWD (Women's Wear Daily) is an essential source of fashion news and trends, and a primary source for materials about the fashion industry and its evolution.
JSTOR This link opens in a new window
An archive of scholarly full-text journals in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences.
The JSTOR archive holds the complete digitized back runs of core scholarly journals, starting with the very first issues, some dating as far back as the 1600s. Subject areas include the humanities, social sciences, and sciences.

JSTOR includes various collections, and the St. Kate's Library has purchased the Arts and Sciences Collections I-VII and the Biological Sciences Collection. These collections include subsets for ecology & botany, language & literature, and music.

JSTOR's agreements with publishers often include a "moving wall," which means that the most recent years (typically 3-5 years) are not available.
Academic Search Premier This link opens in a new window
A multidisciplinary database that is a good starting point for many topics.
Covers 1975 to the present.
Google Scholar This link opens in a new window
An Internet search engine for scholarly literature, including peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports.
Google Scholar enables you to search specifically for scholarly literature, including peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports from all broad areas of research. Use Google Scholar to find articles from a wide variety of academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories and universities, as well as scholarly articles available across the web. Our link to Google Scholar enables you to see which documents you can access through St. Kate's.

Peer-Reviewed Textile Journals

Clothing and Textiles Research Journal
Aims to be the journal of choice among scholars studying clothing, textiles, and related topics across the discipline. The journal publishes impactful scholarship that shapes the discipline. As the official journal of International Textile and Apparel Association Inc, it is peer-reviewed and is published quarterly.
Fashion and Textiles: International Journal of Interdisciplinary Research
Provides scholars and industry experts a platform to showcase the latest progress in the textile field.
Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress, Body & Culture
Provides an international & interdisciplinary forum for the analysis of cultural phenomena ranging from foot binding to fashion advertising.
Clothing Cultures (2015-2018)
Offers a forum for the discussion of textiles and their significance in the production and consumption of clothing and solicits papers from textile historians, designers and design professionals.

Websites

We Wear Culture (Google Arts & Culture)
Explore over 400 stories by curators from leading institutions across the world.
In Pictures: Traditional Dress Around the World
From Rough Guides (travel guides)
Cultural Selection: Clothing as a Reflection of Socio-economic Status and Regional Differences
From the Silk Roads Programme, UNESCO
LovetoKnow (Ethnic Dress)
Fashioning the Self in Slavery and Freedom
Site predominately explores the intersections between slavery and fashion.
The Fashion and Race Syllabi
The Fashion and Race Syllabus is an ongoing academic project exploring the intersection of fashion and race, expanding upon and decentralizing fashion history. Our project also strives to cultivate and sustain a (virtual) research space for fashion scholars of color.

Keywords & Search Tips

Research by specific country, culture, or ethnic group. Start searching broadly with the following terms (especially to find books):

Ethnic clothing
Ethnic dress
Ethnic fashion

Think of the major keywords or concepts that describe the specific aspect of dress from the cultural group you are researching. These are your search terms.

Put AND between unrelated search terms to narrow your search (your results have to have both terms).
- Costume and X country
- Fashion and X culture
- Clothing and dress - X country
Put OR between similar terms (also known as synonyms) and place them in parentheses. This will expand your search.
A good starting search: country name or cultural group (dress OR fashion OR cloth*)
- Hmong (dress OR fashion OR cloth*)
- India dress cultur*

Use truncation (putting an * behind a word) to search multiple forms of a word:

cultur* = culture, cultural
cloth* = clothes, clothing, cloth

Fashion Design and Merchandising Research Guide

Searching WWD/Women's Wear Daily

Books

Find Articles & Images

Peer-Reviewed Textile Journals

Websites

Keywords & Search Tips