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Detail of an illustration depicting women modeling colorful period evening dresses, circa 1923

 

Costume Institute Collections

This collection contains ephemeral and archival collections from the Institute and its Irene Lewisohn Costume Institute Library, with subsets highlighting fashion plates, sketches, and exhibition binders.

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Costume Institute Exhibition Binders medium

Costume Institute Exhibition Binders

Over one hundred binders of materials related to exhibitions held or organized by The Costume Institute, sorted by exhibition title.

Costume Institute Exhibition Binders medium

Costume Institute Fashion Plates

Over twelve thousand plates featuring men's, women's, and children's fashion, published between 1700 and 1955

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Bergdorf Goodman Sketches

Original sketches from Bergdorf's custom salon dating from 1929 to 1952, donated to The Met in 1966.

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Dandyism

Eighteenth-century European pamphlets on the "dandy," generally defined as a person (usually male) who places excessive importance on clothing and personal appearance.

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Death Becomes Her

Thirty-four fashion plates that were displayed in the 2014-2015 Met exhibition "Death becomes her: a century of mourning attire."

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Fashion Plates with Sketches by Karl Lagerfeld, Paris 1860s–1910s

Nearly two hundred French fashion plates, containing sketches and notes by Karl Lagerfeld (1933–2019). The annotations illuminate Lagerfeld’s design process, revealing some of his historical reference points.

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French Fashions, 1895-1915

Photographs dated ca. 1895–1915, created by well-established photography studios, including Talbot, Reutlinger, Felix and Henri Manuel.

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The Harold Koda Collection

Ensembles donated to The Met in 2016 by a group of contemporary fashion designers in honor of Harold Koda, former Curator-in-Charge of The Costume Institute. A selection were photographed by Eric Boman and illustrated by Bil Donovan.

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Jay Thorpe Sketch Collection, 1913-1936

A collection of fashion sketches documenting Paris fashions from 1913 to 1936 that were originally created for the retail store Jay Thorpe, which flourished in New York City from 1920 to the late 1950s.

Illustration of a nude woman wrapped in flowers, fruit, and grasses, surrounded by fish and a dragonfly

Prints of Women as Flowers by J.J. Grandville

Prints of women as flowers by French illustrator J.J. Grandville (1803-1847), displayed in The Costume Institute exhibition “Bloom” in 1995.

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Ruben Toledo “Waist Not” Fashion Drawings

Six drawings by Cuban-American artist Ruben Toledo that were displayed in The Costume Institute exhibition “Waist Not” in 1994.

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Two Centuries of French Fashion

Thirty-one photographs of a collection of mannequin dolls displaying French fashions from 1715 to 1906, created by the Syndicat de la Couture de Paris in the 1940s.