About Griffes
What is Griffes and how do you use it? Find your way with the pointers below.
Griffes - a database of labels
Are you interested in historical fashion? Are you a researcher, student or collector? In Griffes you will find hundreds of labels from historical garments - and where to find them. The website aims to make labels specifically easy to search and discover. In doing so it hopes to offer everyone with an interest a starting point for (international) fashion research. The information is free and quick to consult, without an account.
Searching
You can begin your search from several starting points. On the labels page you will find every label together in a single overview. You can filter it with search terms and use the sort button to order it alphabetically or chronologically. Besides by search term, you can also filter by object type, collection or within a period.
Fashion houses can be searched in the same way, but that page offers an extra sorting option as well: by the number of labels per fashion house. This makes it possible to tell large fashion houses from small ones. Another way to search particular collections is through the pages of those museums, for example the Kunstmuseum or the MET.
Searching geographically is possible via the map. Navigate across the world map to locate labels in space. This reveals, place by place, which fashion houses were based there. From the better-known fashion houses in the great fashion cities to lesser-known local ones, Griffes makes them visible.
Dating
Labels develop over time. The typography of labels, too, follows a fashion. Moreover, from a certain date some fashion houses bear a coat of arms, such as that of a purveyor to the court. Changes of address or in the names of the makers can also help to date a label, and with it the garment the label sits in. The labels of Coche, for instance, show that the house originally spoke of Mesdames Coche, later of Madame Coche and finally of Maison Coche.
With altered garments it sometimes happens that the waistband of the original version was reused. The dating of a garment as given on the website may therefore differ from the actual dating of the label, as for example with this gown by Bellanger.
Sources
Griffes does not manage a collection of its own, but builds on the digitised and openly released information of various heritage institutions. We would be glad to get in contact with more institutions and organisations, so as to expand the database and map the fashion landscape of the late 19th and early 20th centuries further.
Initiators
Griffes is an initiative of Arthur Nieuwland and Tirza Westland and brings together a shared passion for history as well as specific backgrounds in computer science and fashion history respectively.