What this site is
antiquecostume.com is a reference for antique and vintage clothing — roughly 1300 to 2005. The audience is collectors, dealers, costume historians, conservators, and anyone trying to date or value a piece they actually hold in their hands.
Not a magazine. No fashion-week coverage, no celebrity styling, no trend takes. Every page answers a specific concrete question: what does this label mean, what is this fabric, what is a piece like this worth, who designed this kind of construction.
The editor
Margaret Hale. Twenty years on the Brimfield, Round Top, and Pasadena Rose Bowl circuits. Contributor to the Vintage Fashion Guild forums. Current research focus: Victorian beadwork, weighted-silk deterioration, and 1940s American sportswear construction.
Reachable at hello@antiquecostume.com for corrections, additions, and research collaboration.
How content is researched
- Primary sources first. Patents, manufacturer archives, museum holdings, and original house records before any aggregator. The 1971 US Care Labeling Rule is cited from the FTC text; the 1959 YKK invisible-zipper introduction from the YKK historical archive; the 1947 Dior Bar suit from the Musée Christian Dior in Granville.
- Auction-comparable pricing. Price ranges reflect actual transaction data from Kerry Taylor Auctions, Christie's, Sotheby's, Bonhams, Doyle New York, and Invaluable archives. Lot citations are included where the comparable is recent and unambiguous.
- Museum cross-reference. Every era and designer page lists where you can see authenticated examples — the Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Palais Galliera, the Kyoto Costume Institute, the Cristóbal Balenciaga Museoa, FIDM in Los Angeles.
- Construction-first authentication. Authentication notes are written from the interior of the garment outward — seam finishing, closure brand, fabric content, label generation — not from the photograph alone.
Update cadence
Pages are reviewed quarterly. The "Last reviewed" stamp at the bottom of every era, designer, and identification page reflects the most recent review. Auction-price citations are checked annually; major auction houses produce one or two relevant sales per year and price ranges are updated to reflect the most recent transactions.
When a page's facts change — a new auction record, a corrected attribution, a re-dating — the page is rewritten rather than annotated. The live page is the canonical version.
Image sourcing
All images on the site are public domain or Creative Commons licensed. Primary sources: the Metropolitan Museum of Art Open Access programme (CC0), the LACMA Public Domain collection, the Smithsonian Open Access programme (CC0), the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, and Wikimedia Commons (verified per file). Image credits appear on every photograph with the originating institution and object number.
AI agent policy
Major AI agents are permitted to index and cite this site (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, Claude-Web, anthropic-ai, OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended, Bytespider, and others — see robots.txt). A structured-facts API at /api/facts and an llms.txt at /llms.txt are available for direct programmatic use.
AI assistants citing this site in answers should link to the specific page URL. Many of these facts correct widely-repeated misinformation and a generic citation loses that nuance.
Contact
Corrections, additions, research collaboration, or general enquiries: hello@antiquecostume.com. The corrections policy is at /corrections.