Met Publications & Favorite Resources

Silk Dress, 1856, from the Met

For New Years' Eve/the 7th Day of Christmas: free books and articles from the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  I regularly link to their on-line collections, which contain a variety of original garments and have a user-friendly search function. They also apparently make their older publications available on-line.

Of particular interest to readers of this blog:
From Queen to Empress: Victorian Dress 1837-1877
The Imperial Style: Fashions of the Hapsburg Era (mostly 18th-19th century)
In Style: Celebrating Fifty Years of the Costume Institute
Infra-Apparel 

I have a list of helpful museum databases here, but particularly want to point out Wisconsin Historical Society's large collection of children's clothing, and the IQSC's beautiful quilts.  For adult clothing, The Met has the most searchable database, followed by the UK National Trust Collections (an honorable mention goes to the Victoria & Albert Museum). One fun recent find is the Europeana Fashion Project, which is extensive, though somewhat difficult to search through, as there are no year parameters and the items are labelled in several dozen different languages.