Online Primary Research
Ever heard the saying that a picture says a thousand words? A picture of an original dress gives a thousand words and then some! A budding seamstress can look at as many tutorials and websites they want talking about historical clothing, but there is no better teacher in the world than the original seamstresses themselves and the garments they made. When looking at research there are two types, primary and secondary. Words written by researchers, bloggers, and anything that was written about the era afterwards is considered secondary. While that can be nice its not as good as primary research,: items, books, and visual/written sources from the period itself. While secondary research is a dime a dozen, primary is harder to find. Here are some great links to help you out and have fun doing it!
Extant Dresses
This is a wonderful blog that offers and array of original dresses! Ran by the lovely and mysterious Isabella, it has multiple time periods. While it has not been updated since 2018 for unknown reasons, the blog is still a great resource with thousands of dresses and images listed with helpful commentary and measurements. Shows some very nice cotton wash dresses and wrappers.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art has a large online collection, and show some very nicely displayed items. You do need to watch dating on some of the items, but with a careful eye one can see very nice examples of antique clothing
Original Period Magazines
Hathi Trust has several original works, including Godey's Lady's Book and Peterson's Magazine, with invaluable patterns and inforkmation. These magazines were monthly publications that were meant to peak the interest of period women and teach things that were familiar and socially relevant. These magazines show how women thought and give a peak into the world they lived in.
Archive.Org is an amazine source or period books and magazines. It is also an invaluable resource and will even allow for their books to be downloaded and kept on a kindle or pdf file.
Books
Beadle and Dime books were written during the period and similar to an 1860's version of books for dummy. These books were written to be how to's and informative. The link above is just for one book, there are many different topics that the series cover.
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