49269 Golden Oak Loop Suite #100
Oakhurst, CA 93644
P.O. Box 303
Oakhurst, CA 93644
Saturday 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.
Sunday 1:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.
Call for Extended Summer Hours
$2.00 Children under 6 free
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Mary Ann Hutcherson
phone: 559-683-3370
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When hasn't fashion made you smile, shake your head or send you running to the store to get the latest thing! Does a day not go by that you wonder about the clothes you see!! What does it mean to be in step with the times?? You can find out by visiting the museum and see the styles and colors of the times past. Clothes mark the days that we have lived, they reflect our attitudes and our reverence for the tried and true. From generation to generation it's the same and that is history. We wear the clothes and then leave them in the closet of memories. It is that founding thought that is the spirit of the Wild Wonderful King Vintage Museum. Come and see the look of the lifestyles of our past. Travel with us in time-- a hundred years or so. Are you a child of the Depression, a war baby, a baby boomer, or a child of the 50"s? There is something for all of you!!! Now our goal as the museum moves forward its next goal is to acquire a location that holds the whole story!!! We can tell parts of the story now but we sure cannot tell it all!! Come and see the feature exhibit and see if that is your lifestyle of the past!!
The Wild Wonderful King Vintage Museum is the personal collection of Allan and the late Barbara King. For twenty years Allan and Barbara collected beautiful clothes for ladies and gentlemen, ornate hats, dolls, toys, purses, jewelry and shoes. In 1985 Barbara was diagnosed with breast cancer and her 17 year old daughter was killed in a tragic car accident. These two tragedies prompted Allan and Barbara to organize and clean out their home and attic. As they worked on the task they discovered that as pack rats they had accummulated quite a collection of vintage clothing. They began to research the history of the clothes and the vintage clothing collection became their hobby and passion.
A local non profit organization approached Barbara and Allan to lend them their vintage clothing collection for a vintage fashion show. Upon inspection of the King's collection the non profit group asked the Kings to do the fashion show and use the non profit's collection to add to the King's collection. For several years Allan and Barbara did over 300 fashions shows throughout the mountain community and the state of California. The funds raised by the fashion shows was to be the seed money for Barbara's dream a vintage clothing museum.
Barbara and a local resident Toni Lagunoff started searching for a permanent location for the collection. They approached the Meux Mansion, the Kearny Mansion, the Fresno Metropolitan Museum, the Fresno Historical Society and Fresno Flats. The Fresno Metopolitan Museum displayed a portion of the collection` for over two years and the exhibit received rave reviews. At that point Barbara and Toni decided that the collection needed a permanent location in the mountain community of Oakhurst where the collection was born. They also decided that an organization needed to be behind the collection to make it a success.
In 1998 Toni along with three friends formed the Wild Wonderful Women to raise money for the non profit organizations in the mountains and particularly to build a museum for the King clothing collection. The Wild Wonderful Women helped the Eastern Madera County Chamber of Commerce with yard sales and sponsored a dance for a Civil War re-enactment Fund Raiser in Mariposa. They organized the Farmer's Market, an international film festival and finally the Chocolate Festival. The Chocolate Festival has been featured on the National Food Network's "All American Festivals" television show.
In 2002 the Wild Wonderful Women were able to open the vintage clothing museum just 30 days after Barbara lost her fight to cancer. Barbara was able to design the first museum and the feature exhibit was "The Spirit of America". The museum has moved twice since then so that they could be close to the Children's Museum of the Sierra and form a museum destination for the community and its visitors.
The collection's oldest artifact is a pair of 1790 ballroom slippers which is part of a 400 piece collection of shoes. The collection includes over 700 dresses including over 50 wedding dresses with the oldest being a 1840 wedding dress that laces up the back. In the dress collection is a 1920 6 tier paper dress, a black beaded dress worn at Calvin Coolidge's Inaugral Ball in 1922 and a 1930 white sequined formal worn in Jean Harlow movie scenes. There are over 300 hats in the collection including an 1800 blue velvet hat with a dead bird on the brim. There is a corset display, a bodice owned by the granddaughter of Chief Justice John Marshall, an antique piano, and a 1800 human hair artistry corsage and collar. In the men's collection there is military uniforms from the Spanish American War, the Civil War, World War I and World War II. There are Civil War discharge papers and a Civil War sword. The children's collection includes carriages, dollhouses, a potty seat, dresses, christening gowns and lace pantaloons.
The museum does a quarterly newsletter. Barbara and Allan published a book called "Fashions Through the Years". The book includes a history of each era of clothing used in the fashion shows, a chapter on the "underwear story", a chapter on textile care and full color and black and white photos of the collection as modeled during the fashion shows.
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