Today In Black History: Zelda Wynn Valdes
The first African American to own a shop on Broadway in New York City.
Issue #900 Today In Black History, Wednesday, July 30, 2025
Zelda Wynn Valdes was an American fashion designer who broke through societal and racial barriers to become one of the most iconic designers of her time. She was born on June 28, 1905, in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, and grew up in Charlotte, North Carolina. She trained as a classical pianist at the Catholic Conservatory of Music. In the early 1920s, Valdes started to work in the tailoring shop of her uncle in White Plains, New York.
By the 1930s, Valdes was crafting visions of elegance and style that would define designers for decades.
In 1948, she became one of the founding members of the National Association of Fashion and Accessory Designers (NAFAD), an organization that supported Black designers in a segregated industry. The organization, jointly founded by Mary McLeod Bethune, was made up of Black designers who were dedicated to providing opportunities for networking, professional development, and funding young designers and their endeavors. Through her work and mentorship, she paved the way for future generations of Black designers to thrive within the fashion world.
Valdes was the first African American to own a shop on Broadway in New York City. The clientele for her boutique, "Chez Zelda," included Eartha Kitt, Dorothy Dandridge, Ella Fitzgerald, and Mae West, among others.
She had a staff of nine dressmakers and charged almost $1,000 per couture gown. Overall, Wynn was widely known to create dresses that accentuated curves whilst delivering a look of powerful femininity.
One of Valdes's most famous contributions to fashion was her design of the original Playboy Bunny costume. In the 1950s, she was tapped to create a sleek, alluring outfit that would become iconic. The uniform, complete with bunny ears and a fluffy cottontail, helped solidify the emblematic look of the Playboy brand.
Recently, there has been some discrepancy about who was the actual designer of the “Bunny Suit.” What we do know is that by the time Hefner met Valdes, she parlayed her relationship with the mogul into an opportunity to expand her brand, hosting dazzling fashion shows before the Playboy Club’s integrated crowd, billed as “Zelda at the Playboy.”
In 1970, Arthur Mitchell asked Valdes to design costumes for his new company, the Dance Theatre of Harlem. One of Valdes’s innovations was dyeing each dancer’s tights to match their skin tone. She closed her business in 1989, but continued to work with the Dance Theatre of Harlem until her death on September 26, 2001, in New York, NY, at the age of 96. During her time at the Dance Theatre of Harlem, she worked on a total of 82 ballet productions in over 22 countries.
Today In Black History
In 1822, Rev. James Vick became the first bishop of the African Methodist Zion Church.
In 1839, slave rebels, led by Joseph Cinquez, killed the captain of the slave ship the Amistad and took over the ship, intending to sail back to Africa to escape enslavement. The rebels were captured off Long Island on August 26, and during their Supreme Court trial, they were defended by John Quincy Adams. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the rebels, stating that they were free individuals born in Africa who had been illegally captured and transported, and so were free.
In 1855, white Democrats, aided by the police department, attacked a convention of Black and white Republicans in New Orleans, killing more than 40 people and injuring at least 150 people.
In 1863, President Abraham Lincoln issued his “eye-for-an-eye” executive order to shoot a rebel prisoner for each Black prisoner shot.
In 1945, Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. was elected to represent Harlem in the U.S. Congress.
In 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Medicare Bill, which went into effect in 1966.
In 1985, about 300 Black employees who were denied promotions because of racial discrimination were awarded $3.5 million by the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO).
In 2020, former President Barack Obama gave the eulogy at the funeral of Georgia Congressman John Lewis. Former presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton also spoke.
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Hi... I see we have a common interest... I am in the process of writing a series about the history of NAFAD... as one of the few members still alive, I am writing from personal memory with factual help from NAFAD friends... Please check it out.