Hello everyone. I’m wondering what everyone’s favorite sites or sources are for doing research on vintage or finding old advertising? Where do you guys go when you come across a new designer to learn more about them?
The first place I would check is the VFG Label Resource to see if we have an entry on that designer. You can access it from our homepage. https://vintagefashionguild.org/label-resource If I don't find something there, I will do a Google Search. Some of our members have subscriptions to newspaper archives and those often produce great results. I subscribe to the NYTImes - so sometimes I might look there for information.
Newspapers.com has a gazillion of old newspapers, so a great source for ads etc. - but you have to pay for a subscription, it's only free for a few days. I signed up for the free one just to look at some specific ads and then cancelled it again. For some specific research here in Switzerland where I live, I have recently discovered the digital library of one of our universities - ETH E-Periodica https://www.e-periodica.ch/. It has all the Swiss trade register publications and a lot of other publications from trade associations - also everything that Swiss Textiles published to further export, which is a fantastic resource for ads and company information for anything regarding fashion. A lot of museums today also have digital collections which may provide information, images of garments or photos. The Met is probably well-known for that, but I've found several museums here in my area who do the same - it pays to have a look and see if they have a link somewhere to an online collection.
The OCR function is available for free and while it doesn’t help with images, it does allow you to read all the text. I personally use a number of university databases, as well as the Vogue archive and New York Times timemachine but those also require a subscription to the current publication. Google Books as opposed to a regular Google search also produces good results for research
Different resources depending on the period. For more recent vintage late 80s-90s I will often use you tube to watch catwalk videos from those periods, or vogues archive of catwalks. I also do the general trawling if I have something specific. I also sometimes look through my stash of glossy mags from the 80s and 90s and a few fashion books I have accumulated along the way. For items older but post 30s/40s I will often search editorials, potentially newspaper archives too but rarely since I tried a free uk news archive site and cancelled once finished. I also love checking things like the V&A archive. For more general help I will use search terms for items I have no idea about to try to date something. .....Although the VFG probably has the most expertise (FAB) members, the fantastic label and fabric resources and I would say I use it most often of all, I learn so much here.
how do you use university databases? I have come across the FIT one, finally, but it requires staff or faculty or student. none of which I am
As well as the good advice above, I research mostly Australian labels, so love Trove, which offers free access to newspapers, magazines, all kinds of good things. So anyone looking up Australian companies should check it out.
I miss my university login credentials. I have found that if you search for things through your local library (sign up for a library account) you can access some items which would otherwise be off limits to the general public.
