Fashion Business and Technology : Databases

Women's Wear Daily Archive

The Women's Wear Daily Archive provides online access to the definitive fashion and retail publication, Women’s Wear Daily (WWD). The entire archive of WWD, previously unavailable in digital form, opens up new opportunities for research. This authoritative record of how the fashion industry developed over the twentieth century provides valuable primary source material for students across the disciplines of fashion, business, and history.

The Women's Wear Daily Archive allows users to explore influences on the fashion and beauty industry. It contains the full run of past print issues and supplements and will be updated biannually with more recent issues. Users can explore every page of every issue since 1910, scanned cover to cover, including all advertisements and images, in high resolution and full color, presented in page-image format with searchable text. Take research deeper by cross-searching with The Vogue Archive, arts indexes, historical periodicals, and newspapers.

The Harper's Bazaar Archive 

The Harper’s Bazaar Archive significantly enhances the University’s existing holdings of one of the world’s most influential fashion and lifestyle magazines. Providing access to over 500,000 pages of content, coverage extends back to the first issues of both the US (1867-present, with subsequent issues added on an ongoing basis), and UK (1930-2015) editions, both of which are seamlessly cross-searchable. 

The resource is fully indexed, and content is discoverable to either article level or, in the case of advertisements, by brand or company name. The highly visual content is presented in the original magazine layout, providing both context and opportunity for comparative studies of both the US and UK editions. The database also complements the University’s recent acquisitions in general interest magazines, notably those available on EBSCOhost Reseach Databases.  

This powerful lens into American, British and International fashion is essential to students and researchers in Fashion, Business and Technology, with cross-searching facilitated between both  Women's Wear Daily and The Vogue Archive by their shared ProQuest platform. However, whilst synonymous with designers and illustrators, Harper’s also showcased the work of acclaimed authors such as John Steinbeck and Virginia Woolf and photographers including Diane Arbus and Man Ray. Its diverse cultural range offers rich primary source material for the Departments of American Studies, English Literature and Creative Writing, Film Studies, History, and Sociology, as well as interdisciplinary research groupings across the Humanities including CIDRAL and the Institute for Cultural Practices. 

EBSCO Magazines Archive

The Library has recently secured online access to a significant archival collection of American-based general magazines.  

Renowned for their high-quality photography, impeccable production, and trend-setting design and editorial styles, these collections will hold significant historical value to social and cultural historians, as well as interdisciplinary research groupings across the Humanities. The Centre for the Study of Sexuality and Culture and the Centre for the Cultural History of War will also benefit.   

Accessible on Library Search, the archives are hosted by EBSCO, through which researchers already have access to the Time magazine archives.   

The seven new collections comprise: 

• The Atlantic Magazine (1857 - 2014): Researchers can access primary source material on alternative journalism, addressing activism, the arts, economy, environment and politics.  
• Ebony (1945 - 2014): The most influential African American general interest magazine, articles cover African American culture, business, Civil rights, and entertainment.
• Esquire (1933 - 2014): Valuable to researchers looking at 20th-Century current events, gender issues, politics and advertising, Esquire also published work by F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway, fostered the development of the ‘New Journalism’ in the 1960s, and provided early support for the ‘dirty realism’ literary movement of the 1980s.  
• Life (1936 - 2000): This iconic US magazine chronicled the major events of the 20th century and largely defined photojournalism.  
• Sports Illustrated (1954 - 2000): These archives chronicle the evolving role of sports in US culture, from polo and boating to American football and basketball. 
• The Nation (1865 - 2020): America’s oldest weekly magazine was sponsored by Emerson, Longfellow, and Beecher Stowe, its roots stretching back to the Abolitionist movement. 
• Vanity Fair (1919-1936; 1983-2000): Access has been extended to the publication's literary interwar years. The magazine’s later years are valuable to researchers in fashion and marketing, as well as complementing our existing Women’s Wear Daily and Harper’s Bazaar archives on the ProQuest platform.  

Women's Wear Daily Archive

The Women's Wear Daily Archive provides online access to the definitive fashion and retail publication, Women’s Wear Daily (WWD). The entire archive of WWD, previously unavailable in digital form, opens up new opportunities for research. This authoritative record of how the fashion industry developed over the twentieth century provides valuable primary source material for students across the disciplines of fashion, business, and history.

The Women's Wear Daily Archive allows users to explore influences on the fashion and beauty industry. It contains the full run of past print issues and supplements and will be updated biannually with more recent issues. Users can explore every page of every issue since 1910, scanned cover to cover, including all advertisements and images, in high resolution and full color, presented in page-image format with searchable text. Take research deeper by cross-searching with The Vogue Archive, arts indexes, historical periodicals, and newspapers.