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historical costume projects & resources

Real Women’s Clothing Directory

The Real Women’s Clothing Directory has had all its links fixed, so you shouldn’t come across anything broken (hopefully). I’m slowly working on an update, but it’s making me think… as more and more museums put their collections online, it’s become harder for me to keep up with it all (hence the about once yearly update). Would you mind terribly if the guide became a link to museums’ online collections pages/databases? Or is having it all sorted for you incredibly useful?

12 thoughts on “Real Women’s Clothing Directory

  1. I know it's heaps more work but having it all sorted out really is super helpful. Apparently I don't have your awesome collection searching skills – even with collections I'm familiar with I still find links on your site that I couldn't find on my own.

    Personally I'm fine with the once a year (or even once every 18-month updates). I know how much work a project like this is, I'm just grateful you do it at all!

  2. Having it sorted is useful, but I bet it's a royal PITA. An option that might be a good middle ground could be an annotated guide to museum collections.

    Entries like "V&A: Contains clothing & accessories from 1650-present. Search by date, type of textile, geography, designer if known. For example: 1700-1730 / france / silk / dress." (Purely making stuff up here, you get the pic.) A sample search for the big, complicated sites would be v. useful bec. that's my stumbling block.

  3. I'm with Jenny Rose. Major PITA, but having it sorted out with direct links is incredibly useful.

    It's hard to rely on museums' standards for how to find their assets. As much as I love V&A, I often find that I need to enter in several different search terms to see the whole scope of a various collection, because they don't have their terminology standardized in such a way to get it all in one fell swoop.

  4. It's incredibly useful, but I wouldn't blame you a bit if you decided to stop. A museum guide would be better than nothing.

  5. Thanks guys – I think I will keep maintaining it for now, and think about ways to make an annotated directory (like Trystan suggests) work… but the reality is, *I* use it too, so I'd miss it if it were gone.

  6. I appreciate and use your listings. I also understand if it is too much like work. 🙂

    Has anyone told you lately that you Rock?

  7. I'll just echo what eveyone else has said. I use your database regularly, but sometimes only as a jumping-off point. I usually search within the mseum website once I've found their database. So I guess a simple list of museums with online collections would be just as good.

  8. It's pretty good,and the sorting is very handy.
    Although it wouldn't be so bad if it were just a list of museum databases.

  9. I love it being sorted because if I'm looking for something specific, I can find several examples of it really quickly and easily. But, I also think it must be a huge amount of work and that we don't deserve you! Would it help to split the work up between a few people for the annual spring-clean? I'd happily take on a couple of decades!

  10. Your directory is absolutely AWESOME, but I understand how much work it can be and I certainly wouldn't throw the stone at you for giving up such a huge maintenance task. But I do use it quite a lot !

  11. Just to echo sentiments of others, I really appreciate the work which must go into the directory – it is vast and ever changing I know – but I have to tell you that not only do I use it a lot for research, it is just the best 'pick me up' when five minutes of sanity are needed. At this very moment, enduring a wet English summer, my two boys at home and fed up of the weather, I get to sit with a bar of Green & Blacks, tea and drool over decades of gorgeousness!

  12. I use the directory a lot for inspiration and help, and I know many other costumers here in Norway who does as well!

    Just wanted to tell you how much joy and use I've gotten out of it, and that it's much appreciated, perhaps by more people in more places than you think 🙂

    -Anne Marie.

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