‘A walking encyclopedia of costume history’

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This article was published 01/05/2017 (3270 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Most people interested in dressing up get to do so only at Halloween, but Margaret Mills indulges her passion for costumes year-round.

For more than 30 years, the 72-year-old Headingley resident has volunteered with the Costume Museum of Canada.

In addition to serving as a board member, Mills has served as commentator of the museum’s Heritage Fashion Review for almost 25 years.

The review makes history come to life by presenting Canadian heritage and history through period costumes. It is often booked to celebrate special occasions such as town centennials and historic events.

The review features some of the more than 35,000 pieces of apparel in the museum’s collection, some of which date back to the 1700s.

Since the early ’90s, Mills has helmed the production, organizing a group of volunteer models and a pianist.

“I’ve always been interested in costume in one way or another,” Mills said.

“Even as a little girl, my mom would make me a costume and I thought it was the neatest thing.”

Mills first began volunteering with the museum as a model in the fashion review.

Ten years later, when the original commentator, Edna Holland, decided to retire from her duties at the age of 80, Mills took over.

Mills has presented the fashion review everywhere from hotels and hockey arenas to a room beside the area where cattle were kept for auction at an agricultural fair in rural Manitoba.

The museum, which was founded in the 1950s as the Dugald Costume Museum, has no location these days. It relies on the fashion review and other special events to showcase the collection to the public.

Mills’s passion for costumes and her interest in history makes volunteering at the museum a natural fit.

“It’s an education like no other,” Mills said of the collection.

“You can learn through a tangible object.”

Mills’s dedication to the museum makes her “a superstar volunteer,” said Margaret Zellis-Skiba, who serves as board vice-president.

“Any of us volunteers from the museum can ask her a question… and she will have this wonderful answer through all this knowledge she’s gained from the museum,” Zellis-Skiba said. “She is a walking encyclopedia of costume history.”

The museum is looking for more volunteers to join its team. There is an immediate need for a pianist who can play entrance and interlude music during the fashion review. The museum also needs models, educational program presenters, tour guides and volunteers to help with jobs such as planning and setting up exhibits, cataloguing garments and packaging them for storage, and digitizing information about the collection.

Despite not having a building people can visit, the museum is going strong, Mills said.

“We still are a museum and we’re still neat and wonderful, and we afford a great opportunity for seeing the artifacts, getting information and being involved as a volunteer with great people,” she said.

Anyone interested should contact the museum by email at costumemuseumcanada@gmail.com or by phone at 204-989-0072.

If you know a special volunteer, please email aaron.epp@gmail.com.