Because of the fast past and changing nature of fashion it will be important to use trade literature to research the business aspects of the industry. New business trends - like the rise of fast fashion - will show up in trade literature before they show up in books.
Below are subscription resources that would be good for researching industries. The subscription resources marked with a padlock are available to researchers on-site at the Library of Congress. If you are unable to visit the Library, you may be able to access these resources through your local public or academic library. One resource that is only available at the Library of Congress and only on specific terminals is STACKS, a platform for over 15,000 books and 100 newspapers deposited digitally. It contains recently published items and searching through the system is possible. The contents could be printed out, but there is no downloading. Please see a reference librarian for access.
Widely regarded as an authority in the fashion world, its focus has been on cultivating an elegant and sophisticated aesthetic for an affluent readership. The Harpers Bazaar Archive includes every page---including every advertisement---of every issue since its first issue in 1867. All pages are presented in full color and high resolution, and are fully searchable. All editorial content and pictorial features are captured as separate documents to allow for easy search and discovery. For advertisements, the featured company and brand names have been assigned to the document records where possible, and all image captions are captured to a high degree of accuracy, allowing precise retrieval of photographs and illustrations. Contributor names that appear in image credits are also indexed. This archive database provides a wealth of information to researchers and students interested in fashion, beauty, style, gender, and material culture over the past century and a half. Subject coverage includes: Fashion Arts Culture Style Travel Design Retail Beauty Marketing Advertising Gender Women's Studies.
Issues are reproduced from cover to cover in high-resolution color and presented in page image format with fully searchable text. All editorial content and pictorial features are captured as separate documents to allow for easy search and discovery. For advertisements, the featured company and brand names have been assigned to the document records where possible, and all image captions are captured to a high accuracy, allowing precise retrieval of photographs and illustrations. Contributor names that appear in image credits, such as photographers and stylists, are also indexed. This archive database provides a wealth of information to researchers and students of fashion, the retail business and twentieth-century material culture.