The Madames Vintage Clothing Collectors was born at the Surplus City Meet in September 2003 to encourage more wives to participate in the vehicle activities with their husbands. Nancy Hoskins and Donna Mambretti started it.

At the "birth", Catherine Heindell invited Jackie Bloss from an Oroville Antique and Vintage Clothing Store to come show us some of vintage clothing she had available for sale. We tried on clothes and accessories and then dressed up for the USO dance that night.

We were on our way to a growing group of interested wives and daughters. Since that first meeting, the new MVCC has held "Teas" at both the Tower Park and Gridley meets. We have gone out to lunch and wine tasting. We served a continental breakfast at the last Woodson Bridge meet. We made about $90.00. With this encouragement for the members, we have been selling coffee, muffins. We even sold hot dogs! We have also changed our name to The Madames. We felt that some would think that in order to participate, they had to collect vintage clothing. This is not true at all. Our mission was to get to know more women and get more women to join in the activities instead of just sitting in the background not knowing the other women.

The Madames now has a very important mission. With fundraisers at the meets we are able to support troops with phone cards and gift certificates and "goodie boxes". We have spent about $1000 so far in support of our troops thanks to the generous donations from members and vendors. For Christmas 2005, over 300 Christmas stockings have been made by the Madames and were stuffed with donations and mailed to the troops serving both out and in country.

We thank the members for supporting our efforts and the troops and to the Madames we say keep up the enthusiasm and your efforts to make this group a success.