Fashion legend ZELDA WYNN VALDES (1905 – 2001) was the first black designer and costumer to open her own shop, which was the first black-owned business on Broadway in 1948. Her sexy, hip-hugging designs have been worn by many popular, world famous entertainers such as recent CL History Spotlight Joyce Bryant, Marian Anderson, Josephine Baker, Ella Fitzgerald, Dorothy Dandridge, Mae West, Ruby Dee, Eartha Kitt and Sarah Vaughan, among many others.
Born Zelda Wynn in 1905, she got her start in fashion creating outfits for her dolls as a child in Chambersburg, Pa., and began cutting out patterns from newspaper. She studied her grandmother’s work as a seamstress & also worked in her uncle’s tailoring shop. She offered to create a dress for her grandmother, who said she couldn’t because she was too tall & too big. Zelda did it anyway, and her grandmother loved it so much that she was buried in it.
Accentuating the female form, her work speaks for itself and often contained a mermaid quality starting off tight and fitting at the top and flaring with dramatic ruffles at the bottom.
“I just had a God-given talent for making people beautiful,” she told a New York Times reporter later in her career.
But it wasn’t a pleasant time when she landed her first job at a fancy clothier, she recalled in the same article. Some of the clients doubted her abilities as a young black woman, but Zelda was determined to show them what she could do. Over time, many had seen what she could do and wanted her to do the same for them. She opened her shop on Broadway and West 158th Street with her sister, Mary Barbour, who worked as her assistant while also supervising the staff.
