Taking on the role of chairman of the Fashion Museum's board of directors is a wonderful challenge that I accepted because I believe fashion to be vital to Canada as a whole. I have been part of this environment for years. I have really taken my collections around the world. I have had many exhibits in the United States and across Canada, but that goes without saying. I have seen that a number of countries have fashion museums. That is how a people's pride in that exceptional industry is built. That is why I agreed to chair the board of directors of this museum, which remains an overly well-hidden treasure.
The Fashion Museum, which was called the Musée du costume et du textile du Québec—Quebec museum of costumes and textile—until recently, is 37 years old. Created in 1979 in Saint-Lambert, the museum relocated in 2013 to Bonsecours Market, in Old Montreal, in order to enjoy operating conditions more conducive to achieving its mission. Its collections, built up over the years through donations from Canadians, are kept in a museum reserve. They contain over 7,200 items originating from Quebec, Canada and abroad.
The museum's documentation centre contains nearly 900 specialized works on fashion, its artisans, its designers, textile, of course, textile art as a whole and fashion history. The Régor collection, which is currently being worked on, consists of about 5,000 fashion magazines, journals and drawings. It was loaned to the museum by Library and Archives Canada in the 1990s.
Since 2011, the museum has redefined its mission to make textile and clothing heritage, ethnology and fashion the museum's key research, conservation and education themes.
Guided by a duty to remember, develop and share clothing and textile heritage, the museum's activities and products also reflect the creativity and vitality of the present. Between tradition and innovation, the Fashion Museum takes pride in displaying Quebecker and Canadian creations, but also international artifacts, in order to shine a spotlight on artists and artisans who have been part of or are still part of fashion's success across the country.
The Fashion Museum has carried out various outreach initiatives through in situ and extramural virtual and temporary exhibits, educational and mediation activities, publications, workshops and conferences. The activities proposed by the museum are intended both for a broad and general public, and for clienteles with specialized interests. Its boutique contains products related to those themes—fashion, costumes, textile and fibres.
Montreal has some 40 museums, nine of which are located in Old Montreal, including the Fashion Museum. Although this network does include some major institutions and important national historic sites, it is mainly composed of smaller institutions that are well spread out over the territory. Their uniqueness should be preserved. The engagement of the communities that have given rise to those institutions and of the citizens, individuals, collectors and patrons who contribute to them and support them should be given sustained recognition.