Fashion History Museum is a Canadian museum that had galleries located in Cambridge, Ontario, from 2015 to 2025. The FHM 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]
Fashion History Museum in the Old Hespeler Post Office
History
Founders
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 Curator. The museum's other founder, Kenn Norman, who serves as museum's Director, has a background in finance, project management and design.[3][5]
Southworks Gallery
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]
Hespeler Post Office
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]
