Cynthia Cooper

Head, Collections and Research
Curator, Dress, Fashion and Textiles

I love looking closely at a garment and finding stories in its materials, its stitches and signs of wear. Clothing plunges me into intimate and complex conversations with the past.

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Cynthia Cooper is particularly drawn to telling stories about dress and fashion that have become entangled with Canadian identity projects. Most recently, she has been studying an eighteenth-century dress whose journey mirrors that of the first wave of Black emancipation and settlement in Canada. In 2019, with the short film “Get Your Maple Leaf Tartan On!” disseminated on social media, she created a conversation around inclusivity using Canada’s most obscure national symbol—a textile. She is the impetus behind EncycloFashionQC, the unique online encyclopaedic reference for the history of fashion in Quebec, and oversees its content.

Cooper joined the Museum in 1998 as Curator, where she oversees the largest museum collection of Canadian dress. She has also headed the Collections and Research department since 2009. A lifelong interest in clothing design and construction eventually led her to an MS in Historic Costume and Textiles from the University of Rhode Island.

The Museum is a four-time recipient of the Richard Martin Exhibition Award from the Costume Society of America, including her projects Fashioning Expo 67 in 2018 and Reveal or Conceal? in 2009. She was curator for Love in Fine Fashion in 2014 and provided curatorial leadership for the 2013 travelling exhibition From Philadelphia to Monaco: Grace Kelly – Beyond the Icon, as well as the 2011 exhibition and catalogue 90 Treasures, 90 Stories, 90 Years. She was also the Museum’s curatorial representative for the travelling exhibitions Christian Dior in 2020-2021, Balenciaga: Master of Couture in 2018 and Eleganza: Italian Fashion from 1945 to Today in 2016.

She has organized two McCord colloquia: Bodies on Display in 2008 and Collecting Knowledge: New Dialogues on McCord Museum Collections in 2013, the latter in collaboration with Joanne Burgess of UQAM under the SSHRC-funded project Montréal, Dynamic HubSpace. She has represented the Museum in the SSHRC-funded project Object Lives and Global Histories in Northern North America, contributed to the work of the Laboratoire d’histoire et du patrimoine de Montréal based at UQAM, and has been a member of the “Tailored clothes for women, 1750-1930” research project under the ACORSO (Appearances, Bodies & Societies) research interest group at the Université de Rennes.

Active in professional associations, she has served on the national board of the Costume Society of America. She has taught courses on the intersections between fashion and art, and on fashion history, textile history and material culture in Concordia University’s Faculty of Fine Arts and Department of Art History, and on fashion history at LaSalle College.

More about the Dress, Fashion and Textiles Collection
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“La mode québécoise en voyage, 1966.” In Quand la culture québécoise se fait connaître au monde, edited by Denis Saint-Jacques, Marie-José Des Rivières, and Elizabeth Plourde, 225-272. Montreal: Éditions Nota Bene, 2024.

“Canadian Fancy Dress Balls (1876-1898): Transcending Dress, Self and Community.” In Canadian Performance Documents and Debates: A Sourcebook, edited by Anthony Vickery, Glen Nichols, Allana C. Lindgren, and Jerry Wasserman. Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 2022.

“The Victorian and Edwardian Eras: 1860-1910.” In The Fashion Reader, edited by Linda Welters and Abby Lillethun, 69–83. Oxford; New York: Berg, 2007; second edition 2011; third edition 2022.

“’A Typical Canadian Outfit’: The Red River Coat.” In Object Lives and Global Histories in Northern North America, edited by Beverly Lemire. Montreal: MQUP, 2020.

“Biography of a Collection: Costume and Textiles at the McCord Museum.” In Collecting Knowledge: New Dialogues on McCord Museum Collections/À la recherche du savoir : Nouveaux échanges sur les collections du Musée McCord, edited by Joanne Burgess, Cynthia Cooper, Natasha Zwarich and Céline Widmer, 19–36. Montreal: Éditions MultiMondes, 2015.

“Love in Fine Fashion: A Fresh Approach to an Exhibition of Wedding Dresses.” In Exhibitions and Interpretation: Proceedings of the ICOM Costume Committee Annual Meeting, edited by Alexandra Kim. Toronto, 2015.

“The Garment Industry and Retailing in Canada.” In Berg Encyclopedia of World Dress and Fashion, edited by Joanne B. Eicher and Phyllis G. Tortora, 110–21. Oxford: Berg, 2010.

“Masquerade Dress.” In Berg Encyclopedia of World Dress and Fashion, edited by Joanne B. Eicher and Phyllis G. Tortora, 273–82. Oxford: Berg, 2010.

“Dressing Up: A Consuming Passion.” In Fashion: A Canadian Perspective, edited by Alexandra Palmer, 41–67. Toronto, Ont.: University of Toronto Press, 2004.

Magnificent Entertainments: Fancy Dress Balls of Canada’s Governors General, 1876–1898. Fredericton, N.B.; Hull, Quebec: Goose Lane Editions; Canadian Museum of Civilization, 1997.

Cooper, Cynthia, and Linda Welters. “Brilliant and Instructive Spectacles: Canada’s Fancy Dress Balls, 1876–1898.” In Dress 22 (1995): 3–21.

“A 1911 Silk Shantung Suit by Louis Sangan of Jersey,” Tailoring for Women: Theories and Methods, virtual conference organized by ACORSO Research interest group on tailoring for women, June 29, 2024. 

“ʻReading Along the Bias Grain’: Finding Threads of Black Emancipation in an Eighteenth-Century Dress,” Costume Society of America, Washington DC, May 22-25, 2024.

“From Virginia to Quebec City: The Unlikely Travels of an Eighteenth-Century Dress,” Antiques Forum, Colonial Williamsburg, February 23-27, 2024.

“Analysis and Comparison of three Tailor-Made Suits, ca. 1900,” The Global Diffusion of Tailored Clothes for Women, 1750-1930, virtual conference organized by ACORSO Research interest group on tailoring for women, September 17, 2022.

“Fashioning Nation: Expo 67 Hostesses,” Fashion and Diplomacy workshop, virtual conference from University of Oslo, December 3-4, 2021.

“What Lurks within the Label: The Case of J.J. Milloy, Montreal Fashionable Tailor,” Women’s Tailored Clothes across Britain, Ireland, Europe and the Americas 1750-1920, virtual conference from University of Brighton, September 18 and 25, 2021.

“Expo 67: Fashion Takes its Place,” Fashion and Dress in Space and Place, Costume Colloquium VII, virtual conference from Florence, Italy, November 11-15, 2020.

“The Red River Coat,” Everyday Fashion: Extraordinary Stories of Ordinary Clothes, University of Leeds and University of Huddersfield, UK, June 27–28, 2019.

“Tartanizing Canada,” Identities, Networks, & Culture, Second Annual Colloquium in Canadian-Scottish Studies, McGill University, May 3, 2019.

“Tartanizing Canada,” Textiles in Fashion: Creativity in Context, Costume Colloquium VI, Florence, Italy, November 14–18, 2018.

“Fashioning Expo 67 Hostesses,” Making Connections, Costume Society of America, Williamsburg, Virginia, March 13–16, 2018.

“The Red River Coat,” Portal to Progress, Costume Society of America, Portland, Maine, May 29–June 4, 2017.

“La mode et Expo 67,” Montréal, ville de mode, Association francophone pour le savoir (ACFAS), Montreal, May 2017.

“When Too Little Became Too Much: Low Necklines, Imperialism and Resistance in Late Nineteenth-Century Canada,” Restraint and Excess in Fashion and Dress, Costume Colloquium V, Florence, Italy, November 17–20, 2016.

“The Roman Scarf: Ephemeral Fashion from the Eternal City,” Dressing Global Bodies, Pasold Conference, University of Alberta, Edmonton, July 7–9, 2016.

“Uncloaking the Red River Coat,” What Does Heritage Change? Association for Critical Heritage Studies, Montreal, June 3–8, 2016.

“Love in Fine Fashion: A Fresh Approach to an Exhibition of Wedding Dresses,” ICOM Costume Committee Annual Meeting, Toronto, September 8–13, 2015.

“Biography of a Collection: Collecting Costume and Textiles at the McCord Museum,” Collecting Knowledge: New Dialogues on McCord Museum Collections, colloquium organized by Montréal, Dynamic HubSpace: History, Heritage, Future and the McCord Museum, Montreal, November 7–9, 2013.