The Hostess’s Uniform at the Expo 67 Québec Pavilion

In 1966, Monique Michaud was a university student planning to become a tour guide for the City of Montréal. What came next was a huge surprise: she landed a prestigious job as a Québec Pavilion hostess at Expo 67.

Robe et veste d’une hôtesse du pavillon du Québec

Collection of Centre d’histoire de Montréal. 2016.2.1-2.

Fifty years after Expo 67, Monique Michaud still has fond memories and treasured souvenirs of her time at Expo—including the hostess uniform she donated to the MEM in 2016.

The uniform

Chapeau d’hôtesse du pavillon du Québec

Collection of Centre d’histoire de Montréal. 2016.2.3

The Québec Pavilion hostess uniform was a chocolate brown and powder blue dress and jacket with matching hat, shoes, and gloves. It was locally designed and distributed by Dupuis Frères, a department store at the corner of rue Sainte-Catherine Est and rue Saint-André that served French-speaking Montrealers.

Hostesses were held to high standards of dress and decorum at all times. To quote Paule-Andrée Morency, another hostess and friend of Monique Michaud: “It was elegant. Chic and tasteful. And very strict! It was unacceptable if we didn’t have the right shoes. And we had to wear gloves.” 

The knee-length, sleeveless dress has a straight cut and slight flare, in keeping with the fashion of the time. The dress has two pockets and light blue striped accents at the waist and neckline. The short jacket has the same powder blue stripes on its waistband and collar, connected with a vertical stripe along the front closure. 

“The uniform was comfortable, but the shoes were not,” says Michaud of the brown leather shoes with a brown and blue buckle. Like it or not, the hostesses had to wear them.

Souliers d’hôtesse du pavillon du Québec

Collection of Centre d’histoire de Montréal. 2016.2.4-5.

The uniform was topped off with a blue felt hat designed by Anita Pineault, a renowned Montréal hat designer. Pineault operated her own factory and rose to international fame from the 1950s to the 1980s. The distinctive cloche hat she designed for the hostesses has a cutout that follows the line of the ears. “It was tricky to line the ears up right,” recalls Michaud. “A very unusual shape. We thought it was very odd to have a hat like that.” 

The hostess’s hat has a stylized brown emblem on the front which echoes the shape of the foundation of the Québec Pavilion. To complete the ensemble, the hostesses wore small brown gloves, the only part of the uniform that Michaud did not keep.

Serge & Réal Couture

Hôtesses pavillon du Québec

Collection of Centre d’histoire de Montréal

The prestigious job of designing the costume for the Québec Pavilion hostesses fell to Serge & Réal, an up-and-coming Québec maison de couture. Designers Serge Sénécal and Réal Bastien had launched their first collection at the Windsor Hotel in 1964. The international showcase Expo 67 provided was a formidable career boost. In the ensuing decades, their shop and atelier has occupied prime locations on rue Sherbrooke Ouest and avenue Greene. Couturiers Serge and Réal had a long career dressing Montréal high society. In January 2014 they closed shop to enjoy a well-deserved retirement after fifty-one years of helping shape the Québec fashion world. The Québec Pavilion hostess uniforms remain among their claims to fame.

About the object’s donor

Monique Michaud was born in 1931 in Saint-Hyacinthe. In 1967, she worked at Expo 67 as a hostess and team leader at the Québec Pavilion. Michaud donated her hostess uniform to the MEM for the Explosion 67 - Terre des jeunes exhibition celebrating the 50th anniversary of Expo 67.