I’m working on what I call my Citizen Bibliographer Project, which is currently an Airtable database of publicly available vintage and historic sewing books (and which will, with more free time, be a website at some point). I’d like to include a field so people can see at a glance if they’re going to find drafting/tailoring/sewing instruction for what was then considered women’s or men’s clothing, but I also think the gendering of clothing is unhelpful in our more modern age.

Would ‘Clothing Type’ be a good solution? The fields would be things like trouser suits, skirt suits, dresses, petticoats, shirts, shirtwaist, etc.?

And is there any information people would like to see at a glance beyond:

  • date
  • title
  • author
  • subject
  • publisher
  • pub location
  • clothing types
  • target age
  • holding library
  • the current hosting website
  • link