Museum in Ontario chronicling the history of fashion
Fashion History Museum is a museum in Cambridge, Ontario, Canada, which chronicles the history of fashion. It was founded in 2004[1] by Jonathan Walford and Kenn Norman.[2] The museum is a non-profit charitable organization.[3]
Prior to founding the Fashion History Museum, Jonathan Walford had been the founding curator of the Bata Shoe Museum.[2][4] Walford has been collecting historical fashions since the 1970s, finding pieces from auction houses, garage sales, and even rescuing some items from the trash.[2] He has also written several books on fashion.[5]
Walford is currently the museum's Director/Curator. The museum's other founder, Kenn Norman, who serves as the Chair of the museum's board, has a background in finance, project management and design.[3][5]
For the first ten years of its existence the museum lacked a permanent gallery, so it created exhibitions that travelled around Canada and the world, from Hong Kong to Bahrain.[6] A pilot gallery in a mall [5] in Cambridge Ontario, in 2013 saw almost 8000 visitors in the four and a half months the museum was open there.[7]
In June 2015 the museum opened in a 3,000 square foot decommissioned post-office that had been opened in 1929[8] in the former town of Hespeler, now a neighbourhood of Cambridge.[4][3] The museum retained and restored the original terrazzo floors and installed replicas of antique light fixtures for lighting.[8] A restoration project for the clock over the museum's front doors was funded by the public.[9] The town of Cambridge was once a textile manufacturing hub, making the museum a suitable fit with the town's history.[3]
The museum's collection encompasses over 10,000 items.[4] These items range from what may be the oldest existing European shoe worn in North America (it was reputedly worn in New Amsterdam and dates to about 1660),[2] to dresses by Hollywood designer Adrian (Adolph Greenberg)[4] to 1970s handbags made from cigarette packs.[6]