DAZZLING ZELDA

During a period of segregation, Black fashion icon and designer Zelda Wynn Valdes (1901-2001) revolutionized the industry.

As a girl, Zelda loved the “soothing hum” of her grandmother’s sewing machine. She caught the fashion bug early, surprising her grandmother with a beautiful dress she’d designed and sewn by herself. To fulfill her passion, she first worked in her uncle’s dress shop mending and stitching while designing dresses on the side. Her dresses became so popular that she opened “the first Black-owned” boutique in New York City; she served “women of all colors, shapes, and sizes.” As a Black woman, however, Zelda was “cut right out of haute couture” due to racism and sexism. But she persisted by working hard, and she eventually made dresses for celebrities such as Aretha Franklin, Josephine Baker, and Ella Fitzgerald. She designed costumes for the Dance Theatre of Harlem and transformed the field by dyeing ballerinas’ tights to match their skin colors, bringing “a rainbow to the stage.” Zelda mentored other Black artists who wanted to work in fashion, always keeping in mind her dream of “making people beautiful.” Lewis’ cheerful illustrations evoke vintage fashion magazines, chock-full of sketches of bold patterned dresses. In a graceful touch, retro-style endpapers match dresses on both Zelda and her grandmother; one of the patterns also serves as the background for a spread splayed with magazine accolades (“Show Stopping!”) that Zelda received.

An upbeat, inspiring biography of a gifted and forward-thinking designer.