Drama

Welcome to the world of researching costume design! Understanding what was worn in a specific time and place is essential to designing a show. This guide will help you get to know some of the most essential resources that you can use not only for this class, but also for other projects in the future.

Some essential online resources:

If you have questions, concerns, or want to proudly share how you just aced your research, contact the Research Librarian for Performing Arts, Scott Stone: stonesm@uci.edu

Try some of these SUBJECT searches to locate books on costume design, clothing throughout history, and other similar resources:

Clothing and Dress

Costume

Costume Design

Costume History

Dressmaking Pattern Design

A very select group of books on these topics are available below. If you look for these books on the shelves make sure you look at the items immediately surrounding them to find other books on the same topic!

Full length productions of and documentaries about the Tempest:

The Tempest / produced by Donmar Warehouse

The Tempest / produced by the Royal Shakespeare Company

The Tempest / produced by The Globe

Thoughts on The Tempest by director Trevor Nunn

Books about costuming Shakespeare productions:

Books interpreting and historically placing The Tempest:

Plays Reacting to the Tempest

General

• A Cultural History of Dress and Fashion in the Renaissance
  • ebook
  • Particularly look at the chapters: Introduction and Visual Representations

Italy

Online Resources

• ArtStor search for Italian paintings created between 1400-1600
• ArtStor search for Italian fashion, costume and jewelry between 1400-1600
• Titian
  • Streaming video focused on biography, but shows many different paintings by the artist.
• Images and Identity in Fifteenth-Century Florence
  • ebook
• The Renaissance Print: 1470-1550
  • ebook
• Fashion and Masculinity in Renaissance Florence
  • ebook

Physical Resources 

• Dress in Italian painting, 1460-1500
• The Italian Renaissance
• Painting in Renaissance Venice
• Men or supermen? The Italian portrait in the fifteenth century
• Painting in Italy, 1500-1600
• Renaissance: 15th & 16th century Italian paintings
• Venetian art from Bellini to Titian

England

Online Resources

• ArtStor search for English paintings created between 1400-1600
• ArtStor search for English fashion, costume, and jewelry between 1400-1600
• Dressing the Elite: Clothes in Early Modern England
  • ebook
• Elizabethan costume design and construction
  • ebook

Physical Resources

• A picture history of English costume
• English costume in the age of Elizabeth, the sixteenth century
• Costume in England: A history of dress to the end of the eighteenth century
• The clothing of the Renaissance world: Europe, Asia, Africa, the Americas
• Renaissance & medieval costume
• Costume of the Western World: Fashions of the Renaissance in England, France, Spain and Holland

General

• Berg Encyclopedia of World Dress and Fashion
  • ebook
  • 10 volumes. Each volume is dedicated to a different geographic areas (e.g., vol. 1 - Africa, vol.2 - Latin America and the Caribbean). Locate the volume that contains your geographic focus, open it, and then browse the table of contents. Generally they are arranged by culture and then chronologically within that culture. You can find tons of amazing information to get you started in many different places and times!!
• ARTstor
  • image database
  • Do an advanced search and enter in a date range (make sure you are selecting the correct "CE" or "BCE" that is next to the date boxes!!) and choose a location using the geographic menu. Try not to be too specific if you are searching for time periods before 1900. For example, you might choose a fifty or hundred year range rather than just a single decade. Depending on how many results you get then decide if you need to narrow it down further.
• Bloomsbury Fashion Central
  • text and image database
  • The link provided takes you to a list of over 100 ebooks focused solely on clothing and fashion. Scroll through the title list to see if any of them provoke a response in you. Interested in Bollywood clothing? There's a book that will help you learn more about it. How about goth clothing? There's a few books on that. Clothes to wear in space? There's even a book for that too!

There are many physical books available in UCI Libraries. Additional physical and electronic resources available on the Costume Design research page.