DESIGNER RESEARCH PROJECT
Description: A written research report about a fashion designer (see attached list to select from-one student per
designer). Report must include visuals of the designer’s work from magazines or newspapers published
during the time period that the designer worked.
Part1. Research
A. The designer’s background (family, education, design inspiration, etc. Two excellent books from
which to start are: Couture by Caroline Milbank and Who’s Who in Fashion a Fairchild Publication.
B. Biographical information about you designer must come from multiple books and limited websites.
Written Report
C. Once you research is complete
1. Write the report
2. Give proper citation to the books you used to research your designer—use MLA (Modern
Language Association) style format in your bibliography as well as your internal citations
within your paper. When it doubt cite your information. I’d rather see too much citation than
not enough. An MLA handbook can be found at the library and online.
3. Include a bibliography, alphabetical order by author’s last name or title of book/magazine (if
no author or editor is given). Again, use MLA format for compiling your bibliography.
4. Include an introduction, discussion, and conclusion in your report.
5. Edit yourself for typos, misspelled words and grammatical errors. If you find these in the
final draft of you paper to turn in--then neatly correct them. Otherwise these errors are minus
1 point for each typo, misspelled word, or grammatical error. These points add up and can
reduce an A research paper to a B, a B to a C, etc.
6. Your report must be typed, double-spaced with 1” margins. Please use 12 point font. Include
a title page. A minimum of 4-5 pages of text (not counting the title page and bibliography is
a good length—longer is ok.).
This section will be graded and returned to you. Therefore any mistakes or errors noted should be corrected for
the final project.
Part II- Research from magazines and/or newspapersA. Review fashion magazines (ie. Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, or Glamour) during the time in which you
designer worked. Find illustrations of his/her work. Find at least 15-20 good illustrations-make sure
they are large enough and clear enough to see after you have photocopied them. If your designer
worked from 1960-1974 then find examples from a spread of the years—not just from one or two
years. Photocopy the illustrations, date each illustration with the magazine title, month, year, and
page numbers (if it is given).
B. Place you illustrations in a binder, arrange them in a chronological order by year. Type up a list of
the illustrations and their source—for example:
Illustration #1-March 31, 1965, Vogue
Illustration #2-October, 32, 1970, Vogue
Turn in the binder and the list of Illustrations.Points will be deducted if the photocopies are not from sources,
representative of a span of years, unclear or too small to review.
Many of these magazines can be found in the regular stacks, in the reserve stacks or on microfilm. The online
catalog will only help you to find the location of the particular magazine or newspaper. You must go to the
stacks or the microfilm and go through the magazines looking for your designer’s work.
A strong word of advice—this section of the project usually CANNOT be completed overnight—some
magazines needed may be in the ISU library repository and this requires several days delivery time. You will
very likely need to go through lots of magazines to find the minimum number of illustrations. So plan and work
ahead of the date!
Part II, also, will be returned to you with comments on what should be corrected or added for full points in the
final grading.
Part III-Analysis
This is your analysis of you findings from the magazines and/or newspapers. In this section you might
note whether you agree or disagree with what secondary sources comment about your designer’s work as it
relates to what you found in the visuals. However, most of this section should be your own analysis of the
designers work: strengths, weaknesses, likes, dislikes, what do you think this designer’s contributions to fashion
are during his/her time period? Etc.
Part IV-Final Presentation-Due: Dec. 4
This includes all three previous parts (I, II, and III). This should be organized into the sections with a
title page, bibliography (in MLA style, including the books from Part I and the magazines or newspapers that
your visuals came from in Part II). Any necessary corrections should be made at this time.
Be prepared to share your research with the class in an oral presentation with visual aids. Powerpoint is
recommended.
Part IV will be graded on: following directions, corrections made from initial grading of Part I and II, neatness,
completeness, organization, accuracy of information, types of sources used, number of years covered by the
visuals, professional appearance of the overall presentation (being creative is fine), accuracy of the
bibliography, use of MLA style in citations and in bibliography, and clearness of information presented to class.
Also significant to the grading of the written report is the lack of grammatical errors, spelling errors and typos.
These errors count off 1 point each and can add up. Therefore a well-researched paper can earn a lower grade
due to copious typos and other errors. So please edit your work before you type the final draft to turn in. If you
find a few errors in the final draft—just correct them with a pencil.