The Generosity of Donors: The Costume Institute Library

All photos by the author, unless otherwise noted.

The Met's Costume Institute collects, preserves, and displays historic and contemporary high fashion. Its more than thirty thousand items represent fashionable dress and accessories for men, women, and children originating in five continents and dating from the fifteenth century to the present. The Costume Institute is also home to Irene Lewisohn Costume Reference Library, one of the world's foremost fashion libraries.

The library includes thirty thousand books and periodicals as well as over 1,500 designer files all pertaining to the history of fashion, haute couture, regional clothing, and costume from around the world. Its extensive special collections contain fashion plates, photographs, illustrations and sketches, textile swatches, lookbooks, archives, and related ephemera, some of which are available online.

The Costume Institute began as the Museum of Costume Art, an independent entity created in 1937, led by Neighborhood Playhouse founder Irene Lewisohn. Lewisohn's collection of historic and regional costume formed the basis of The Museum of Costume Art's holdings. Their activities included providing facilities to enable visitors to study original materials first hand through workroom demonstrations for designers and students, a storeroom/showroom to demonstrate examples, and the establishment of a reference library of images and published materials. These activities took place in rented spaces, including offices in the newly constructed Rockefeller Center's International Building in midtown Manhattan.

In 1946, with the financial support of the fashion industry, the Museum of Costume Art merged with The Met, and it became The Costume Institute in 1959.

Box 359, Costume Institute records, The Metropolitan Museum of Art Archives, New York.

Previously unprocessed archival materials that have recently been organized and added to The Costume Institute records document some of the ways The Irene Lewisohn Costume Reference Library's collection has grown since 1937, especially through generous gifts from donors.

Box 423, Costume Institute records, The Metropolitan Museum of Art Archives, New York.

An extensive collection of detailed library accession card files in The Costume Institute records show the addition of new materials in the late 1930s and 1940s through purchases of relevant materials. Materials were also acquired as gifts and other donations from individuals and organizations.

The Museum of Costume Art's co-founder Irene Lewisohn died in 1944. The Irene Lewisohn Fund was created in her memory a year later. According to an official announcement in November 1945, the intention of the fund was for "the income to be used for the encouragement of Costume Art any way the Trustees may think best." Significant bequests from Lewisohn's estate were added to the fund at that time, and continue to be added annually since that time, with the proceeds being used for library purchases. In 1960, as part of a major renovation of The Costume Institute, The Irene Lewisohn Costume Reference Library was named in her honor.

Box 422, Costume Institute records, The Metropolitan Museum of Art Archives, New York

A wide variety of people and organizations, including fashion designers, have made gifts to the library. Vera Maxwell, whose garments found in The Costume Institute's collection number over 70, donated a collection of her sketches and other materials now open for researchers by appointment in the Irene Lewisohn Costume Reference Library. It is one of many collections of designers' original records that the library has acquired over the years and opened for research.

Watson Digital collections, Wedding 1870-1929, Plate 045

Among the gifts of theatrical designer Woodman Thompson is a series of fashion plates documenting stylish dress, regional costume, and military uniforms from the eighteenth to the twentieth century. These fascinating, beautiful, and frequently used images are now digitized and available online, along with many other resources from the Irene Lewisohn Costume Reference Library.

Gifts. Weissman, Polaire, 1967, box 428, folder 3, Costume Institute records, The Metropolitan Museum of Art Archives, New York

Costume Institute curators and librarians have also donated generously to the library, as this listing of gifts from curator Polaire Weissman attests. Her largesse included more than twenty years of books, magazines, pamphlets, and photographs that were added to the library's collection.

Cataloguing. Physical and intellectual organization. [1950s] Box 228, folder 8

The layout and contents of the Irene Lewisohn Costume Reference Library have changed over the years, as the Museum's footprint has evolved and The Costume Institute has grown and modernized. Over time, the tools available to provide researchers with access to the library's plethora of materials have progressed from card files, to print catalogs, to online records.

Interior of the Irene Lewisohn Costume Reference Library

Amid all of these changes, the Library continues to grow through gifts and purchases. We are ever grateful to the many donors whose generosity, year after year, has helped to create one of the world's foremost libraries of fashion reference resources.

Stay tuned to learn more about the Irene Lewisohn Costume Reference Library and see some of its eye-popping treasures. Check back to In Circulation when librarian Julie Le will take a deep dive into the Library's contemporary collecting focus and share some of its iconic treasures.