Skip to main content

Zelda Wynn Valdes (1905 - 2001)

By


Zelda Wynn Valdes was an extremely successful Black fashion and costume designer. She was born in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, where she began teaching herself to sew by studying the work of her grandmother's seamstress. In a 1994 interview with The New York Times, Valdes recalls a time where she designed a dress for her grandmother, and that when she asked her grandmother if she could, she responded by saying, "Daughter, you can't sew for me. I'm too tall and too big," but she did anyways and the dress was a perfect fit. After graduating high school, her family moved to White Plains, New York, where she worked at her uncle's tailoring shop, and later at an upscale boutique, where she became the boutiques first black sales clerk and tailor. 

In 1948 at age fourty-seven, Valdes opened her own boutique, called Chez Zelda. She is recognized as being the first Black designer to open her own shop, which was the first Black-owned business on Broadway. She designed elegant dresses that accentuated and celebrated the female figure, made for women of all shapes and sizes. Many of her dresses were sleeveless, with a low, heart-shaped neckline, and a shape that hugged around the waste. Her iconic style was extremely desired in the world of Hollywood, as her dresses were worn by famous entertainers such as Dorothy Dandridge, Josephine Baker, Marian Anderson, Ella Fitzgerald, Ma West, Ruby Dee, and many others. She was a master at her work and her custom dresses always fit live gloves. Zelda designed for Ella Fitzgerald for over twelve years, but only measured her once and based sizing off of the recent images of Fitzgerald in the news. She also designed for singer Joyce Bryant, a huge star in the Black community in the early 1950s. Valdes is responsible for the signature look that Bryant developed by beginning to wear Valdes's dresses. This led to Bryant being placed on the cover of Life Magazine, and coining the nickname "the Black Marilyn Monroe." Valdes popularity only kept increasing, as more and more stars wanted to rep her signature style. 
Joyce Bryant in classic Valdes dress


In 1958, Valdes caught the attention of Playboy Magazine's founder Hugh Hefner, and he hired her to design the first Playboy Bunny costumes. 


Playboy Bunny costume


Then in 1970, Valdes began designing costumes for the Dance Theater of Harlem, where she would work until her death in 2001 at age 96. She designed costumes for over eighty productions, and played an important role in promoting dancers of all colors. Valdes strayed away from the tradition pink ballet tights, and had the dancers wear tights that were died to match their skin tone. She wanted to combat the traditional aesthetic that all ballet dancers are meant to be the same color, and stood for diversity in dance through her costume designs. Not only did Valdes promote diversity in the world of dance, but she also did in the world of design. She was the president of the New York Chapter of the National Association of Fashion and Accessory Designers (NAFAD), which was an organization of Black designers which was founded on the sole purpose of promoting Black designers. Valdes made it her mission to help Black female designers in a profession largely dominated by white men. 

Valdes was a very inspiring and talented designer in history. All of her work was devoted to celebrating women and people of color by designing costumes and dresses meant to make women feel beautiful, and by paving the way for Black female designers. She knew that it was important that dresses are designed to fit the woman, and not vice versa. Also, it was very difficult at the time to be recognized in both the world of fashion design and costume design, but Valdes prospered in both. Despite all of her success, Valdes remains overlooked in fashion history studies. 


Written by Lia Sgarzi


sources

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Althea McNish, Trinidadian Textile Designer

By
By Katrina Filer Born in Trinidad but living in the foggy, grey world of London in the 50s, Althea McNish brought the colorful inspiration of her birthplace to the British textile scene. She was descended from former Black slaves who had fought for the British in the war of 1812, and she was born while Trinidad was still a colony, 38 years before they gained independence. Her impressionist-style prints based in the Caribbean's natural beauty were groundbreaking, pushing the way that her contemporaries looked at fashion, interior design, or anything else that could hold a pattern. Surrounded by a culture that constantly appropriated the art of its colonies (Trinidad included) and deep in a white male-dominated field, McNish still found her place in the fashion and textile industry, wielding genre-defining abstractions of tropical and floral beauty.  Angela Cobbinah. Althea McNish in 2008. Photography courtesy of the Camden New Journal. McNish's early life in Trinidad was charact
Post a Comment
Read more

Archie Boston

By Anonymous
A portrait of Archie Boston. Retrieved from https://www.aiga.org/design-journeys-archie-boston Who is Archie Boston?   During 1943 in the segregated town of Clewiston, Florida, Archie Boston was born, but was raised in St. Petersburg. Boston’s father, a sugarcane sharecropper, and his mother, who took care of their home, instilled the importance of valuing education in the minds of their six children, which played a pivotal role in Boston’s life (2008). Boston’s talented painting and drawing skills led him to be accepted into Chouinard Art Institute, known today as CalArts, which is where his older brother Bradford also graduated from. During his senior year, Boston secured an internship at the Carson/Roberts advertising agency and finished Chouinard Art Institute with a “...BFA degree in Advertising Design with Honors” (Daniel, 2013).    Early in his career, Boston was bouncing between various advertising and design studios before collaborating with Bradford to establish their own adv
Post a Comment
Read more

Lin Zhu — Charles Clarence Dawson

By
Charles Clarence Dawson was borne in   Brunswick, Georgia  in 1889. He is an artist and designer. Dawson studied art at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. After 2 years he left for New York in 1907 and became the first black student who got admitted to the Art Students League. Dawson came from a middle-class family. He worked for various jobs to attend the Art Institute of Chicago. He also involved in many organizations and also the founder of the Arts and Letters Society, which is the first black artist organization in Chicago. After his’ graduation is also a week after the U.S entered WWI. Dawson decided to serve in the army. He returned to Chicago after the war. Photo of  Charles Clarence Dawson   Dawson was a freelancer; he did some advertising illustration for major black entrepreneurs. He also drew drawings for a Chicago magazine called Reflexus (reflects us), and advertisement for Oscar Micheaux, who is a black film director. During 1920, Charles Clarence Dawson played an esse
Post a Comment
Read more