Antique & Vintage Clothing: A Guide to Dating & Valuation of Women's Clothing 1850 to 1940

Your Vintage Keepsake: A Costume Society of America Guide to Costume Storage and Display

Art Deco Hair: Hairstyles of the 1920s and 1930s.

Collectible Fashions of the Turbulent 1930s

Vintage Hats & Bonnets 1770-1970 : Identification & Values Collector's Guide to Vintage Fashions Identification and Values : Identification and Values A History of Men's Fashion Costume in Detail : 1730-1930

20,000 Years of Fashion : The History of Costume and Personal Adornment 120 Great Fashion Designs, 1900–1950, CD-ROM and Book

Books for Costume Reference:

• Dating Old Photographs 1840-1929

• Wedding Fashions, 1860-1980

• Dressed for the Photographer : Ordinary Americans and Fashion, 1840-1900

• American Victorian Costume in Early Photographs

•  Victorian and Edwardian Fashion : A Photographic Survey

• Children's Fashions, 1860-1912 : 1,065 Costume Designs from 'La Mode Illustree'

• Wedding Fashions 1862-1912 : 380 Costume Designs from 'LA Mode Illustree'

• Victorian Costume for Ladies

• The Well-Dressed Child: Children's Clothing, 1820-1940

• Victorian Fashions and Costumes from Harper's Bazar, 1867-1898

• Twentieth-Century Fashion : The Complete Sourcebook

• Fashion Accessories: The Complete 20th Century Sourcebook

• Victorian to Vamp: Women's Clothing 1900-1929

MORE COSTUME BOOK LINKS

Everyday Fashions of the 20th Century CD-ROM and Book Victorian Fashion in America : 264 Vintage Photographs

Victorian & Edwardian Fashions for Women, 1840 to 1919

Notes:

Non-Fashion Steps to consider:

• What kind of photo is it? Format? Framing?  This will narrow the range of dates to look for, depending on whether it is a daguerreotype, cabinet-card, or snapshot.
• Are there props, backgrounds, or other clues that can tell you about the occasion of the photo?
• If the photo has been faded, or damaged or has a faded caption, scanning and enhancing in Adobe Photoshop can reveal missing information.

Fashion information:

• Women’s clothing is easier to “date” than men or children’s dress.
• Try to date clothing first using similar dated photographs as a guide, rather than jumping straight to fashion plates.
• Fashion plates are good however for spotting matches to a weird detail of dress that doesn’t show up in many photos.
• Not all wedding dresses were white.  Not all white dresses were for weddings.
• From 1850-1914 Particular attention should be placed on the shape of women’s sleeves.  Sometimes sleeve shape alone can nail down the exact year the dress was made.
• Remember that fashions are usually worn for a few years after they are bought, but it is really unusual for a normal person to have a fashion that is even a year “ahead of it’s time”.  If your granny swears up and down that a photo is of her own granny on her wedding day in 1895, and she is dressed in a gown with a 1903-style sleeve, she got the date wrong. 
• Note the age of the sitter in relation to the clothes.  Older people’s clothes and hairstyles tend to be a bit more outdated than younger people’s are.  An 18-25 year old will not be caught dead wearing a fashion that is five years out of date, but his grandfather will. Many women wear the same hairstyle they adopted at 18 till they die.
• The Truth as Revealed by Yearbooks: Older fashions (especially in hair and makeup) tend to make young people in old photos seem older looking to their descendents.  This is especially true of the 50 years that precede the viewer’s birth.
• Fashions tend to be less extreme, and move more slowly in more rural areas.
• Menswear changes since 1800 are all about tiny details.  Necktie history in the 20^th century, and coat collars and vests in the 19^th century are often big clues.
• When looking for images that will match your own, try to find photo or costume books from the same country or general area.  However, if you find a matching style of dress from London or Paris, and your photo is from a rural or frontier outpost, don’t automatically assume the image is from a year much later than the time the fashion was new.  Fashion information traveled quite fast by the time of the beginning of photography, and mass produced clothing was normal by the mid 19^th century, so even in Alaska or Australia, Western fashions traveled to remote outposts quickly.
• Traditional dress in most places is not “fixed” in the same style over time, it just moves slowly.  Examining the minor textile or needlework details in a photo in Traditional “Ethnic” or ceremonial dress will give you hints about the year the photo was taken, and bits that are Westernized will too.