Memphis Museum Perfect Fit for Fashion Historian

New to Memphis in 1999, Karen Kilgore Ralston ’69 felt uprooted. She and husband Jim had lived for 30 years in Cincinnati, where he worked as a corporate general counsel. But when Jim’s company changed hands, the couple relocated for his new job. To shake off her gloom, Ralston checked out the Woodruff-Fontaine House, a preserved Victorian mansion and museum in the city’s historic Millionaires’ Row. A self-taught historian of vintage and Victorian clothing, with a library of books on the subject and her own extensive collection of garments at home, Ralston wandered the three-floor house museum with pleasure. Then she spotted the ribbon. It was all wrong − a modern anachronism on an old blouse. “I opened my mouth and said, ‘Ooh, that ribbon is not correct,’ ” she recalled with a laugh. She soon started volunteering at the museum. There, she fixed that little ribbon– and took a big step toward banishing her discontent. Today Ralston is Woodruff-Fontaine’s volunteer … [Read more...]