Arizona Costume Institute - The Arizona Costume Institute was founded in 1966 to support the Fashion Design Department of Phoenix Art Museum in the acquisition and preservation of garments and accessories of historical and aesthetic significance. It also promotes appreciation of fashion design through exhibitions and programs. Some activities include monthly fashion and textile programs, visits to private collections and studios, events at local fashion stores, trips, luncheons and receptions.

Old State House Museum - Visitors to the Old State House Museum will be able to see the museum's collection of Arkansas's First Ladies' Gowns. The collection began in 1942 and is not only one of the most popular exhibits in the museum, but is also one of the most unique collections of its kind in the United States.

Wild Wonderful King Vintage Museum - The King Vintage Museum is a work in progress and a tribute to Barbara King. Mrs King, who along with her husband Allan, collected vintage clothing for more that 20 years, was active in the museum project. The King Vintage Museum has more than clothing to display, with items such as Civil War discharge papers, an 1880s courting sofa, and a great collection of teddy bears honoring the American spirit.

The Hand Fan Museum of Healdsburg - The Hand Fan Museum of Healdsburg is the first Museum in the US dedicated solely to the exhibition of fans.

The Lace Museum - The Lace Museum was founded in 1976 on the mid-peninsula of the San Francisco Bay Area by a small group of women who had decided to get together and keep the art of lacemaking alive. By meeting regularly, the founding members were able to teach each other lace making techniques, teach other groups and individuals how to make lace, and to educate the community about the fine art of lacemaking through exhibits, shows, and community events. The museum was incorporated as a California non-profit organization in 1981, and opened in a small donated space in Mountain View. From the beginning it received important donations of lace. However, when the shopping center was closed, the museum had to put its collection into storage until a suitable rental space in Sunnyvale was located. The museum opened there in 1994.

Doris Stein Research Center Costume and Textiles at The Los Angeles County Museum of Art - The Doris Stein Research Center for Costume and Textiles is comprised of primary and secondary materials related to the history of costume and textiles. Holdings include: original textile designs; sketches from fashion, theatre and film designers; period fashion plates; drawings, engravings and manuscripts dating from the sixteenth century to the present; an extensive library of books; incunabula; lengthy runs of journals and magazines such as Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar; photographs and slides; research files indexed by designer, subject, region and historical period; an extensive study collection dating from the eighteenth century; and several major archives including the James Galanos, Mr. John and Commercial Pattern archives.

Victorian Bridal Museum - The House of Victorian Visions Bridal Museum offers more than just nostalgia in nuptials -- it's the only museum in the western United States offering a permanent collection of antique bridal gowns and accessories.

Guelph Civic Museum

The Bata Shoe Museum - Toronto - Discover the treasures of North America’s unique shoe museum. Over 10,000 shoes are housed in architect Raymond Moriyama’s award-winning 5 storey structure. Artifacts on exhibit range from Chinese bound foot shoes and ancient Egyptian sandals to chestnut crushing clogs and Elton John's platforms. The Museum celebrates the style and function of footwear in four impressive galleries.

Costume Museum of Canada - Dugald, Manitoba - The Costume Museum of Canada (CMC) is home to a collection of 35,000 artifacts spanning 400 years. The renowned collection represents the identity of everyday Canadians, urban and rural, public and private, through the garments that they made, purchased and wore. The Costume Museum of Canada also has some of the best of world fashion with pieces from Chanel, Norman Hartnell, Worth, Schiaparelli, Vionnet, Scassi and Paco Rabanne.

Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art - The Department of Costume and Textiles - Designers from Worth to Miyake are represented in the museum's costume collection, which concentrates on fashionable dress from the Western Hemisphere. The collection includes mens', womens', and childrens' dress dating from the eighteenth through the twentieth centuries. Underwear, outerwear, shoes, hats, jewelry, handbags, parasols and walking sticks contemporaneous to the costumes are also collected. A recently-acquired collection of ballet costumes from Diaghilev's Ballets Russes (Russian Ballet) brings the set and costume designs in the Wadsworth's collection to life.

Museum of Lifestyle and Fashion History

The Wages House Vintage Clothing Museum - The Wages House is home to a lovely collection of vintage clothing from the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries.

The CTAHR Historic Costume Collection - The Costume Collection, housed in the Textiles and Clothing Program in the College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources, University of Hawai'i at Manoa, is one of the largest collections of garments, textiles, and related artifacts in an American university.

Hope B. McCormick Costume Center - The Hope B. McCormick Costume Center houses an extensive costume collection of more than 50,000 pieces. Paralleling the growth of Chicago, the collection of women's, men's, and children's clothing and accessories is particularly strong in materials from the late 19th century to the present. The earliest pieces, dating from the late 18th century, include suits worn by George Washington and John Adams. The collection also has a number of objects belonging to Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln, as well as clothing worn by prominent Chicagoans, including items such as former mayor Jane Byrne's inaugural suit, Michael Jordan's basketball uniform, and Mahalia Jackson's choir robe. The extensive designer collection, ranging from Charles Worth and Paul Poiret gowns to the innovative designs of Issey Miyake and Yohji Yamamoto, has earned the Costume Center an international reputation.

Northern Illinois University Art Museum
Balancing the challenges of contemporary art with the riches of
traditional visual art for a comprehensive examination of culture.
Rotating exhibitions from the university*s collections, contemporary
art from regional and national artists, and national traveling
exhibitions. Get-On-The-Bus art excursion program. Exhibitions and
lectures are free and open to the public.
www.vpa.niu.edu/museum

Altgeld Hall 116
Northern Illinois University
DeKalb, IL 60115

La Porte County Historical Society Museum - Vintage clothing is one of the permanent displays of the Museum, but a part that is constantly changing. Due to the fragile nature of textiles, clothing items are displayed for a few months at a time, and then exchanged with other items. Storage requires acid-free boxes and wrapping tissue, kept away from the damaging UV rays from sunlight or fluorescent fixtures.

John E. & Walter D. Webb Museum of Vintage Fashion - Antique clothing is displayed in the themed rooms of an 1894 residence.

American Textile History - The American Textile History Museum houses one of the largest collections of its kind in the world. Its collections contain thousands of books, trade catalogs, business records and personal papers, prints and photographs, a growing costume collection, millions of textiles samples, and hundreds of machines used in textile manufacture. The Museum is an unparalleled resource for the study of textile history in the United States. You will find a wealth of information about textile art, factory architecture, textile production, technological invention, labor history, industrial organization and the everyday life of mill towns.

Historic Deerfield - 18th Century Fashion Fantasy - Historic Deerfield's Curator of Textiles, Edward Maeder, has done the unimaginable! He has recreated in paper the elegant fabrics worn by ladies, gentleman and children two hundred years ago. Using his extensive skills as an artist and designer, Edward has turned ordinary rolls of paper into brocades, delicious damasks, colorful chintzes, lace and embroidery. Using the simplest of "design tools" - dime store color markers, glue, egg cartons, plastic wrap, and doilies - he has brought the textile arts to life in a creative and exciting way. Edward has also created mannequins to display these 18th century fashion fantasies.

Oakland County Pioneer & Historical Society - The Vintage Clothing Collection consists primarily of 19th and early 20th Century clothing. Men's, women's and children's clothing are represented, reflective of the type of clothing worn in Oakland County. We also have a collection of military uniforms from the Civil War, Spanish-American War and both World Wars. Exhibits and traveling presentations are presented to the community.

Friends of Fashion Vintage Clothing Collection at the Chassell Township Museum - The Friends of Fashion function as an educational arm of the Chassell Historical Organization, Inc. They present historical fashion shows and mount a new exhibit showcasing vintage clothing and history each year in the Chassell Heritage Center.

The Costume Institute at The Metropolitan Museum of Art - The world-renowned Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum possesses more than 75,000 costumes and accessories from seven centuries and five continents. The Costume Institute has particularly impressive holdings of dress accessories, including hats, shoes, gloves, and buttons; eighteenth-century menswear from the French and English courts; twentieth-century haute couture, especially from France; postwar American sportswear; and contemporary fashion.

Museum of the City of New York's Costume Collection - As one of the strongest historically-based collections of clothing in this country, the Museum of the City of New York's Costume Collection preserves over 25,000 garments and accessories worn by New Yorkers from the mid-eighteenth century to the present.

The Museum at FIT - Founded in 1967 by the Fashion Institute of Technology, The Museum at FIT is dedicated to advancing knowledge of fashion through exhibitions, programs and publications. The Museum at FIT collects, conserves, documents, exhibits, and interprets fashion, with particular focus on aesthetically and historically significant "directional" clothing, accessories, textiles and visual materials, with emphasis on contemporary avant-garde fashion. The Museum is committed to achieving a world-class standard of excellence in the exhibition of fashion and we organize an extensive program of specialized classes, tours, lectures, and symposia for diverse local, national, and international audiences.  As a "think-tank" for fashion studies, The Museum is dedicated to an ambitious program of scholarly publication, new initiatives, and research opportunities for students, scholars and designers.

Cornell Costume and Textile Collection - The department of Textiles & Apparel maintains the Cornell Costume and Textile Collection, which includes more than 9,000 items of apparel dating from the eighteenth century to the present, as well as a substantial collection of ethnographic textiles and costume. The collection is used for teaching and research. A gallery displaying selections from the Collection is located on the third floor of Martha Van Rensselaer Hall, and open during normal weekday business hours when the University is in session.

The Mint Museum of Art - Since the early 1970s, the Mint Museum of Art has been building a collection of fashionable and historic costume and accessories. Today the collection numbers over 6,000 items that span more than three centuries of fashion design and includes such notable designers as Doucet, Fortuny, Dior, Givenchy, Blass and Versace to name but a few. The garments illustrate not only fashion trends and social history, but also design elements, fabric selection and construction techniques. In addition to special exhibitions that are presented, the museum has dedicated one gallery exclusively to showcasing selections from the collection, while also incorporating fashion examples within its permanent collection galleries.

The Historic Costume and Textiles Collection - The Historic Costume and Textiles Collection is an educational, scholarly, and artistic resource for The Ohio State University as well as the Columbus area fashion industry. Begun in the 1940s as a teaching tool in the Textiles and Clothing classrooms, the Collection currently numbers approximately 10,000 items. These encompass a range of historic textiles from the 15th century to 20th century furnishing fabrics. The costume pieces include men's, women's, and children's garments and accessories from the mid-18th century to contemporary 21st century designers.

Kent State University Museum - The Kent State University Museum's costume collection encompasses American and European high fashion from the 18th century to the present day. The majority of early garments in the collection were part of the original Shannon Rodgers/Jerry Silverman gift.

The Museum of Mourning Art - Housed in a modern building modeled after Mount Vernon, the museum shows us how people have coped with death through the ages. Mannequins in mourning clothes and jewelry adorned with pictures of the dead demonstrate how the rich and the common folk mourned and how much time and money they spent on honoring the dead.

The Columns Museum - The Pike County Historical Society is noted for its outstanding vintage clothing collection. The collection includes a mid-18th century gown which was worn to a reception for the Marquis de Lafayette when he toured the area early in the 19th century, as well as dresses, gowns, shoes, and other items which belonged to Jeannie Gourlay Struthers, the 19th century actress. Ms. Gourlay-Struthers was on stage at Ford’s Theater the night President Lincoln was assassinated, and later passed the Lincoln flag on to her son, who, in 1954, donated it to the Society.

Rhode Island School of Design - The Museum has been actively exhibiting textiles for one hundred years and today the department of Costume and Textiles consists of over 15,000 objects, dating from antiquity to the present. The collection is divided roughly into eleven thousand flat textiles and four thousand costume and accessories that trace the history of fabric and dress.

The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston - Western European and American fashion from the 19th century to the present day is the primary focus of the MFAH´s textiles and costume collection.

Texas Fashion Collection - Known as the Dallas Museum of Fashion when it was first brought to the UNT campus in 1972, the name was later changed to the Texas Fashion Collection. Today, the facility in Scoular Hall houses more than 14,000 items of historic dress as a valuable resource for students and researchers.

Museum of Texas Tech University - To date, the collection has over 100,000 items, including costumes and accessories, household textiles, and related artifacts dating from approximately the mid-1800s to the present. It documents the true Americana as it existed and still exists in this region. Specimens in the collection that relate directly to the theme and research goals of the Museum include men's, women's and children's clothing and accessories representing early Euro-American ranch life to the recent past; military and occupational uniforms, and other articles of clothing illustrative of regional, occupational, and professional endeavors; and household textiles that are indicative of women's activities since the pioneer days.