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Fashion & Textiles: Academic Sources

A guide for students of Fashion & Textiles on how to find & reference high-quality books, articles, reports, news & images about fashion. Also includes where to find guides to help improve your fashion design skills.

What are academic sources?

 

Books & journal articles are the two main types of academic sources that you are expected to use in your university studies. 

  • Books - are useful for broad overviews of topics.
  • Journal articles - explore specific ideas within a particular topic. 

You can find books & journal articles in...

Databases

 

The Library collection

 

The Library Catalogue searches the entire library collection which includes books, journal articles and more!

Learn how to search the Library Catalogue in the video below.

Some books in the Library Collection about fashion & fashion theories: 

A great way to get inspiration is to browse books on the shelf. Browsing and viewing physical books is also great for looking at the images you can find in fashion books as well. 


The Library shelves are organised by Dewey Decimal Numbers, which means all the books on a subject are in one place! 

Level 8:

  • 391.009 Fashion - Social Aspects and history

Level 9:

  • 646 Fashion
  • 746 Textile Arts
  • 746.92 Fashion Design and Designers

Hot tip: 

Also check out the Large size books area on Level 9. These books are bigger but have more images!

Fashion journals

 

The Library subscribes to many journals which contain studies and research on fashion & textiles design. 

Fashion journals often have entire sections that focus on a particular fashion topic or issue, so searching in individual journals is great for finding information on a specific fashion topic

Suggested Journals

  • Fashion practice
  • Fashion theory
  • Clothing and textiles research journal
  • Fashion studies
  • Design and Culture
  • International Journal of Fashion Studies

Search tips

 

What do you do when you're not getting the results you want from your search?