The sources available for costume research today raise some important questions: Where and how did theatre and dance costumes become a visible part of an essentially material culture? How can their relation to visual arts and fashion be described and defined? What do they reveal about morality and social conventions? Where did costume designers and tailors find inspiration for an information about the various types of (theatrical) dance characters, and can their work be traced back to other visual, textual, or material sources? This volume is the second in a series of proceedings from workshops organised by the Emmy Noether Research Group »Ritual Design for the Ballet Stage: Constructions of Popular Culture in European Theatrical Dance (1650-1760)« based at the Theater Studies Department of Leipzig University. Its seven essays are the result of new research in the fields of Art History, Cultural Anthropology, Musicology, Theatre, Dance, and Costume Studies. The essays focus on both the terminology and methodology of costume research, and their internationally renowned authors present numerous case studies on topics from the seventeenth to the twenty-first centuries.