Resource Centre

These 13,000 items feature works on the history of fashion in the Western World since Antiquity and, more specifically, from the 18th century to today. The main types of documents include monographs on couturiers, biographies and autobiographies, multilingual exhibition catalogues, cutting & tailoring guides, etiquette guides, dissertations and theses focusing on themes related to costumes, fashion phenomena, textiles and multidisciplinary subjects: historical, technical, artistic and sociological. An active acquisitions policy based on purchases, exchanges and donations means that the collection is regularly enhanced.
 

The collection totals around 5,500 items from 1866 to the present day. It has been enhanced by numerous donations from public institutions and private individuals, as well as by a number of purchases. It comprises catalogues from department stores, couture houses, catalogues from brands specializing in furs, lingerie, accessories…, as well as textile manufacturers' albums from 1935 to 1940.

Trade catalogues, embellished by renowned illustrators and photographers, stand out through the wealth of information they offer: types of clothing, price mentioned, special vocabulary, model's name… They played a role in the business fabric of the times and offer an insight into everyday life. Catalogues were posted to clients on a regular basis but were cast aside once the season was over. Their ephemeral status has retrospectively led them to become rare, precious documents. The trade catalogue collection provides a wealth of insights into fashion and costume knowledge, and is a complementary source of information for researchers.

The auction catalogue collection, which totals some 2,000 items, was created thanks to donations from auction houses and auctioneers (Kerry Taylor Auctions, Christie’s Londres, Baecque & Associés, Coutau-Bégarie, Chombert & Sternbach…), museums (Musée de Cluny-Musée National du Moyen-Age, Musée du Louvre…) and private individuals (Béatrice Dosgheas…). It comprises catalogues whose sales mainly focus on costumes, fashion, accessories, as well as fashion illustration and photography.

Auction catalogues are ephemeral documents produced in various formats and may be rare and prestigious. Despite their primary role, they are not speculative items. The textual information often includes the date of the lot, the designer, the description and the composition of the item. Occasionally, the documentary sources in which the lot was published are also mentioned. They provide researchers with a wealth of information and iconographic material.

The Palais Galliera houses the archives of exhibitions held at the museum from 1902 to 1967. Prior to being a museum dedicated to costumes and fashion, the Palais Galliera promoted Industrial Arts by organizing temporary exhibitions on a variety of themes (lace, embroidery, jewellery, ironwork, philately, cinema, costumes…). After the Second World War, the rooms in the Palais focused more so on showcasing contemporary artists. Although their content may be somewhat uneven, these archives bring together items that illustrate the creation of the exhibitions through to their opening to the public: catalogues, invitations, scenography, correspondence, lists of the works displayed, photos, etc. This archive collection provides glimpses into the history of the building, which offered a stage for the artistic and industrial production that marked the 20th century.  

The study of fashion is inextricably linked to the periodicals devoted to the subject. These indispensable sources for fashion historians reflect and transmit the changes that shape society. They provide their readers with advice and knowledge of the social and cultural environment in which fashion reigns. The Palais Galliera houses around 600 different periodicals, including 250 of the most influential in the history of fashion, totalling over 50,000 issues. The collection covers the period from the dawning of the 19th century to the present day; the 20th century makes up the main part of the collection, with seminal periodicals for studying the discipline such as La Mode Illustrée, L’Art et la Mode, Fémina, Les Modes, La Gazette du Bon Ton, Art Goût Beauté, Jardin des Modes, Vogue, L’Officiel de la Couture et de la Mode, Harper’s Bazaar, Adam, Votre Beauté, Elle and Dépêche Mode. This collection is completed by issues of The Face, I-D, Dazed & Confused and Purple. The museum invites to access a dozen of the periodicals published between the 1910s and 1950s online. 

To better appreciate the work of couturiers and fashion designers, since the 1980s, the Palais Galliera has been collecting invitations from fashion shows and press kits and, since the 1990s, lookbooks. These items form a collection of contemporary fashion archives chronicling the activities of fashion houses and brands, many of which have not kept their own archives. This collection has been brought to life mainly through donations from journalists, through the collection of communication media produced by couture houses, fashion designers and brands and covers the period from the 1970s to the present day. Due to the fragile and rare nature of the items and compliance with trademark rights, researcher access to this collection is highly-limited and by appointment only.

11,000 invitations (600 couture houses, fashion designers and brands): 
Invitations, whether they are simple Bristol card or three-dimensional items, are used as a promotional tool for haute couture and ready-to-wear collections for fashion professionals and clients alike. Fashion ephemera, designed for a select audience of clients, professionals and journalists, are artefacts that involve considerable creative and business effort. These invisible, secret aspects of fashion-system collaboration and creation have been unveiled to the public through an array of the Palais Galliera exhibitions since 2006. They intrigue through their inventiveness, their multifarious shapes and the variety of materials used to imagine them. They herald the collections to come and help forge the image of the house or the brand.

• 7,000 lookbooks (400 couture houses, fashion designers and brands): 
Lookbooks use photography to centre stage the items of a haute couture or ready-to-wear fashion show or collection. They first appeared on the scene back in the 1980s and became widespread among couturiers and fashion designers around the end of the 1990s. They are sent to a target audience of fashion journalists for analysis purposes and the images are used as visuals in the press.

•8,000 press kits (500 couture houses, fashion designers and brands): 
The oldest press kits housed in the museum date back to the 1960s, but the collection mainly focuses on the late 1970s through to the present day. This communication media provides detailed information on collections, diffusion lines, products and licences distributed by the brand, as well as the names of fashion show partners and players. Press kits are used as editorial media for fashion journalists and columnists as they provide a storyboard of the collection, enhanced by a selection of visuals, illustrations and photos. 

The cutting guide collection housed at the Palais Galliera offers a valuable panorama of tailoring techniques from the 19th and 20th century that are essential for recreating the history of clothing and accessories.

Cutting & tailoring guides, which first appeared in the 16th century, did not provide updates on technical skills until Garsault published his "L’art du tailleur" (The Art of Tailoring) at the end of the 18th century.

During the 19th and 20th centuries, numerous "treatises", "guides" and "systems" promoting different methods based on calculation systems, which their authors liked to describe as being the most efficient, were published. Cutting & tailoring guides are teaching tools that provide an introduction on how to make garments for men, women and children. They also enable connoisseurs to perfect their technique and to remedy gaps in their knowledge. These technical guides provide information on how to take measurements, mark measurements, scale sketches and patterns, and show how to cut different pieces of fabric to make a garment. The layout is always illustrated with several illustrations and details such as the back, the front, the sleeve, etc. Others, which are rarer, describe how to prepare and cut fur, and some deal with footwear patterns. They were generally printed by tailoring schools or in the press, yet we have occasionally received them in manuscript form, as was the case with Grillot 's "Le Professeur" (The Professor). These documents are fragile, rare and precious. As such, the Resource Centre chose to digitize them to protect the originals and to be able to disseminate them to a wider audience.