The Women's Wear Daily Archive

The Women's Wear Daily Archive is the only digitized source of the backfile of Women's Wear Daily (also known as WWD).  WWD is a unique record of the twentieth century US and international fashion and beauty business.  This database provides a wealth of information to researchers and students of fashion, marketing, and the retail business as well as supporting inquiry into women’s studies and twentieth-century material culture. The newspaper of record for the clothing industry, WWD has been called ‘the Wall Street Journal of the fashion world’ and ‘the Bible of fashion.’

Users can also use this database to search for accessories, advertisements, beauty, business, correspondence, fashion, front pages, media, obituaries, retail and runway news. Our policy is to include every issue in full, from volume 1, issue 1 and to scan from cover to cover. Due to the rarity of some of the original print volumes, however, there may be occasional small gaps (issues or pages). Page-level completeness is approximately 99.5%.

History of WWD

Founded in 1910 by Edmund Fairchild, Women's Wear was launched as a small weekly sister publication to the >Daily News Record, a menswear journal founded in the late nineteenth century. Moving to daily publication in 1927, Women's Wear Daily covered the news behind the manufacturing of women's clothing, including sales and acquisitions, production costs such as textiles, and personnel moves within the industry. In later years, under the editorship of John Fairchild, WWD began featuring social commentary, tracking the personal lives of high-society.  It soon became the most powerful and influential fashion journal in the US, and subsequently released W magazine. They were purchased by Conde Nast in 1999, and WWD continues to publish breaking news and is widely considered the ‘the fashion bible' by industry insiders.

The last regular print issue of WWD was published on February 22 2017, with daily online-only issues (WWD Digital Daily) now being produced instead. Please note that, under the terms of our license, new issues will be made available in The Women’s Wear Daily Archive no sooner than six months after their original publication.