Zelda Wynn Valdes

Zelda Wynn Valdes (1905-2001), fashion designer. Zelda Christian Barbour was born in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, the oldest of seven children in a working-class family. As a child, she learned dressmaking from her grandmother and made outfits for her dolls. When she was thirteen her grandmother declined her offer to make a dress for her, saying “you can’t sew for me. I’m too tall and too big,” but Zelda sewed it anyway; “She was so happy with that dress,” she later recalled, “She was buried in it.” Her sense of style was also shaped by her study of classical piano at the Catholic Conservatory of Music. After graduating from Chambersburg High School she moved to White Plains, New York, and worked at her uncle’s tailoring shop. She then found a job in the stock room of a boutique, working her way up to become the store’s first black clerk and tailor despite the fact that some clients were unhappy seeing a black woman behind the counter. “It wasn’t a pleasant time,” she said many years later, “but the idea was to see what I could do.” In 1935 she opened her own dressmaking business in White Plains. Her success there led to an even larger shop called Zelda Wynn, which opened in 1948 on Broadway, making her the first African American storeowner on the iconic street. She first gained notoriety for dressing the bridal party of the 1948 wedding of Nat King Cole and Maria Cole.

From there Valdes’ client base grew to include many of the black female celebrities of the era: Dorothy Dandridge, Josephine Baker, Ella Fitzgerald, Eartha Kitt, Marian Anderson, Ella Fitzgerald, Ruby Dee, Diahann Carroll, Edna Robinson (wife of Sugar Ray Robinson) and Joyce Bryant. Despite their success and fame these women were often disrespected by white designers, but Valdes provided a space where they could get the clothing and the respect that they wanted. During the post-World War II period large numbers of black women celebrities were gaining notoriety and success across racial lines for the first time in American history, and Valdes’ clothing played an important role in expanding views of celebrity and of beauty. Her aesthetic included elaborate sequin and hand beading patterns woven onto top-quality fabrics like satin and crepe in patterns that were both form-clinging and sophisticated; in her words, “I have a God-given talent for making people beautiful.” Valdes’ work with Bryant to develop the singer develop a new public image accelerated Bryant’s career; her record sales increased, and Life magazine called her the “Black Marilyn Monroe.” Her work with Fitzgerald, which due to the singer’s hectic schedule often had to be done through photographs rather than in-person measurements, was even more lucrative and culturally significant. Fitzgerald’s full figure had led many to label her as unattractive, but Valdes’s dressed led to a more glamorous image and helped to slowly change popular ideas about body shape. Her work also gained more respect for her as a creator. Black women who created clothing had traditionally been dismissed with the label “seamstress” while their white counterparts were called “designers” or “couturiers,” but Wynn insisted on the latter terms. She also drew the patronage of white celebrities such as Mae West and Marlene Dietrich. In 1949 she became president of the National Association of Fashion Accessory Designers, an organization of black women in the design business created by Mary McLeod Bethune to, in the words of historian Tanisha C. Ford, “elevate other black female designers while helping them build networks, address discrimination in the workplace and promote racial diversity in the fashion industry.”

In the 1950s Valdes closed the Zelda Wynn store and opened a new one called Chez Zelda next to Carnegie Hall in Midtown Manhattan, the largest central business district in the world and home to the highest real estate prices on the planet. She employed nine dressmakers and charged nearly $1,000 for each gown. Although some designers focused on either costumes for performance or fashion garments for social events, Valdes was comfortable working in both genres. The most famous example of this was her work on the famous Playboy Bunny costume for Hugh Hefner’s Playboy Club. Some stories state that she singlehandedly invented the outfit, but it is more likely that she played an important collaborative role in its creation. In any event, the Bunny costume became one of the iconic symbols of the 1960s and was the first commercial uniform to be registered by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, although it also drew criticism for objectifying women. Her work also led “Zelda at the Playboy” fashion shows at the Playboy Club. In the 1960s she became the director of the Fashion and Design Workshop for a youth outreach program called the Harlem Youth Opportunities Unlimited and Associated Community Teams. In this capacity she taught costume design and sewing to thousands of children. In 1970 she became costume designer for Arthur Mitchell’s Dance Theatre of Harlem, the country’s first black classical ballet company. Over the next thirty-one years, she created pieces for eighty-two productions. Before Valdes’ work with the company all dancers’ tights were colored pink and labeled “flesh” or “nude” on the assumption that all dancers were white, but Valdes colored the tights for the Dance Theatre to match the skin tone of each dancer. She closed Chez Zelda in 1989 because of her frequent travel and sister’s declining health, but she continued to work with the Dance Theatre until her death in 2001. Although she was largely forgotten at the time of her passing, the success of other black designers in the last few decades and the inclusion of different body types in the fashion industry has led some to look back to the pioneer who helped make this possible.

©David Brodnax, Sr.