Costume Balls Book

Around 150 years ago, lavish costume balls and skating carnivals represented the height of social entertainment, featuring a vibrant cast of characters often inspired by historical figures. These events offered attendees a rare chance to embody noble heroes or heroines from the past. Participants invested in elaborate costumes and visited photographers’ studios, as evidenced by the extensive collection of memorabilia preserved at the McCord Stewart Museum.

This book accompanies the exhibition Costume Balls: Dressing Up History, 1870-1927, held at the McCord Stewart Museum in Montreal. It includes a leading essay that contextualizes the fancy dress phenomenon and its colonial roots in Canada, alongside essays examining the portrayal of these events in art, photography, and publications, a decolonizing analysis of Indigenous and marginalized representations, and the transient nature of surviving artifacts.