The Costume Designer's Handbook A Complete Guide for Amateur and Professional Costume Designers
By Rosemary Ingham and Liz Covey

Every craft and trade has its bible, and this is one such book, a practical course in how to read and analyze a script from the point of view of the costume designer, and the process to follow to create appropriate and original solutions for each play's costuming challenges. Includes an extensive bibliography and shopping guide.

"Every play is different, every production situation is unique, and every time you set out to design costumes for the theatre you may be sure you are in for an adventure!" - Rosemary Ingham

Elegantly Frugal Costumes The poor man's do-t-yourself costume maker's guide
By Shirley Dearing

A costumer is always haunting the thrift shops (Dodie is on a first-name basis in every thrift shop in Boston!), yard sales, and collecting donations. This book makes the costume designer's job into a treasure hunt! Most everything you need to know about making costumes for plays, pageants, or musicals at minimum expense.

Costume ideas for: 1800 to WWI, Angels, The Roaring Twenties, Colonial, The Fabulous Fifties, Renaissance, Monsters, Biblical, Medieval, Comedy. Dodie uses this one a lot.

Historic Costume for the Stage
By Lucy Barton

A scholarly tome of great weight and amazing detail, written in 1935, revised in 1961 by the author, infused with the spirit of the Bard. When you open this book you will be transported back in time by the elegant line drawings and richly detailed descriptions of dress, hairstyles, jewelery, materials, and everyday life of the periods:

Egyptian, Gothic, Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Renaissance, Elizabethan, Restoration, Georgian, First Empire, Romantic, Crinoline, Bustle, Fin de Siecle, New Century.

"When you costume a play in the period [Early Gothic] --it is sure to be a romantic play -- think of the type of feminine beauty you should try to reproduce: small sleek heads, high foreheads, long white necks, and sloping shoulders, long arms with tapered, gem-laden hands..." - Lucy Barton on Early Gothic costuming, page 146.