Zelda Wynn Valdes

Zelda Christian Barbour was born on the twenty-eighth of June 1905 at Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, the daughter of James Barbour — a Pennsylvania porter — and Mary Lou Barbour. She was raised at the family relocation to White Plains, New York in the principal early-twentieth-century Westchester County Black community.

She was apprenticed at fifteen in 1920 to her uncle, a tailor at a White Plains high-end boutique, and apprenticed at the principal Park Avenue New York couture house of the white couturier André Carlier from 1922 to 1929.

She opened the principal Chez Zelda atelier at White Plains, New York in 1948 — and was the principal first Black designer to open a couture salon on Broadway at New York at the principal Manhattan Broadway atelier in 1948.

She operated the principal Chez Zelda Broadway atelier at New York from 1948 to 1969 — at the principal post-Second-World-War New York couture period — and produced the principal commissioned wedding gowns and stage costumes of the principal Black entertainment-and-business-class community of the period.

Her principal clients across the principal Chez Zelda Broadway atelier period included Joyce Bryant, Constance Bennett, Ella Fitzgerald, Marian Anderson (placed in this archive), Eartha Kitt, Maria Cole, Mae West, Josephine Baker, and the principal Black Broadway-and-cabaret entertainment community.

She was commissioned in 1960 by Hugh Hefner to design the principal Playboy Bunny costume for the principal Playboy Club opening at Chicago on the twenty-ninth of February 1960 — the principal Playboy Bunny costume of the satin corseted-bodice, the rabbit-ear headpiece, the cottontail, and the bowtie collar. The principal Valdes Playboy Bunny costume was retailed across the principal Playboy Club international franchise across the next forty years.

She joined the principal Dance Theatre of Harlem at New York in 1969 — at the founding period of the principal Dance Theatre of Harlem under the principal choreographer Arthur Mitchell — and held the principal Dance Theatre of Harlem head-of-costume-design position from 1969 to her death in 2001.

She produced across the thirty-two years at the Dance Theatre of Harlem the principal costumes for approximately eighty Dance Theatre of Harlem productions — at the principal Black classical ballet tradition of the late twentieth century.

She died at New York on the twenty-sixth of September 2001 of natural causes, at ninety-six.

She is honored here as the designer of the Playboy Bunny costume and the principal costume designer of the Dance Theatre of Harlem.