Welcome to the Mobile Millinery Museum and Costume Archive We Bring History to You!
Every Hat Tells A Story! "For if what faded away came with splendour, what is permanent must have much more splendour.” - 2nd Corinthians 3:11 Norma Shephard is the founder and director of the Mobile Millinery Museum, a unique travelling museum whose “working hats” have raised funds for diverse causes; from homeless teens in rural Ontario, to cancer research and diagnostic equipment, to a women’s and children’s shelter in Israel. Shephard’s use of hats, shoes, and bridal gowns as cultural story blocks to prompt the telling of tales, myths, and legends transforms audience members into folklore informants, eager to share their own reminiscences. The museum’s trademark retrospective millinery fashion shows are an opportunity for fashion enthusiasts to relive the “Great Age of Millinery” and the Mobile Millinery Museum is now taking a portion of their vintage and designer footwear collection on the road to present Shoe and Tell events and antique handbag presentations. Recognized as an historian and authority on vintage hats and fashion, Shephard has appeared on Canada A.M., CBC Morning, CBC Fresh Air, CH Morning Live, Breakfast Television, Canadian Living Television, This Morning Live, Main Street, CKCO, The Source, and Neighbour to Neighbour and has been featured in numerous print media. Shephard is the subject of a biography by Patricia Boyle, entitled The Hat Lady. “What Martha has done for the domestic arts, Norma is doing for the staid world of museum curatorship,” says Boyle. “She has taken material history out of the archives and into the community, presenting it in new and exciting ways. When I realized that Norma was being recognized internationally I knew it was time for a book.” In 1985 she earned a Canadian Achiever’s Award for entrepreneurship and since founding her museum in 1999, has penned and photographed Accessorizing the Bride; Vintage Wedding Finery Through the Decades (Schiffer Publishing), 1000 Hats (Schiffer Publishing), In Step With Fashion: 200 Years of Shoe Styles (Schiffer Publishing), Lingerie; Two Centuries of Luscious Design (Schiffer Publishing) and Dear Harry; The Firsthand Account of a World War I Infantryman. Col. Gordon Atkinson, retired, said of Dear Harry , “…fascinating and evocative of war … a tome of obvious labour and love.” Shephard’s freelance articles have been published in newspapers and magazines in the United States and Canada. |  Norma Shephard - Founder & Director Corinne Shephard - Assistant, Mobile Millinery Museum On Location at Parkwood Estates, Oshawa, Ontario 2007  Norma Shephard - August, 2008 |
The Mobile Millinery Museum will celebrate National Hat Day, January 15th, 2010 with a hat exhibit from 2 - 4 P.M. at Heritage Place Retirement Residence, 4151 Kilmer Drive, Burlington, On. This is a free event, open to the public. 
