Kahle v. AshcroftEuropean fashion plates from 1930-40
originally submitted by Katharine Whisler:
Fashion plates from Europe from 1930's to 1940's.
Stifled uses
Katharine Whisler:
I'm a volunteer at the Evanston Historical Society working with its collection of historic clothing and clothing-related artifacts. Our collection is the second-largest in the state of Illinois, we put on two to three exhibits of historic clothing a year, and our collection is also available to researchers who make arrangements to see it. I'm not sure if our problem falls under the issue addressed in the Kahle case or the Golan case, or both.
A few years ago we received a wonderful donation of European fashion plates (primarily from France) from the 1930's to early 1940's from the family of a woman who had been a professional dressmaker in Evanston. We believe the plates to be quite unique. These plates would be invaluable for study by students of the history of clothing, designers of theater costumes and even as inspiration to designers of modern fashion.
The plates are fragile, and cannot be displayed as they are. As the plates are not very large, we would like to have some of them photographically increased into poster size for incorporation in appropriate exhibits. We would also like to either post them on the Internet, or publish them in a book that could be sold to raise money for the historical society. Either option would allow many more people to study and benefit from them.
Most of the plates are undated, but we are able to ascertain when they were published from the clothing shown. Some of the plates are marked with the names of the publishing house in France; some indicate that they were also imported by a company in New York. None of the companies now exists (as far as we can tell). We suspect that the French firm may have gone out of business during WWII. Some have no publisher's mark at all.
Although the undated plates without copyright notices would be public domain by now if published in the U.S., we are reasonably sure that most if not all of them were published in France and therefore not public domain (especially given the particularly strict copyright laws relating to fashion drawings in France). Obviously, those bearing copyright notices are clearly not public domain. We have made some efforts to track down the rightsholders of these plates, but it has proved impossible for us, especially since we are a non-profit organization with a limited budget. We are therefore unable to use the plates as we would like.