This is the third and concluding part of our look back at the early fashion designers of colour.
Elizabeth Keckley achieved prominence and notoriety as modiste to Mary Todd Lincoln, wife of US President, Abraham Lincoln in the 1860s.
Francis Criss designed clothes for Hollywood star and fashion icon Gloria Swanson. While Ann Lowe is most famous for the wedding dress of Jacqueline Bouvier when she married future US President, John F Kennedy.
Zelda Wynn Valdes was the first African-American to open her own shop in Broadway in New York in 1948. She was known for her sexy hip-hugging styles and numbered among her clientele many of the notable black women of that era including Dorothy Dandridge, Josephine Baker, Marian Anderson, Ella Fitzgerald and Gladys Knight.
 |
| Dorothy Dandridge in a trademark Zelda Wynn dress |
Wynn started out by cutting her patterns out of newsprint, studying her grandmother’s seamstress and working in her uncle’s tailoring shop.
Her work even caught the eye of Hugh Hefner and she went on to design the original costumes for the Playboy bunnies.
 |
| Joyce Bryant |
She also helped found the National Association of Fashion and Accessory Designers, an organisation of black designers.
Valdes continued working until her retirement in 2000. She passed away the following year.
Now for a slight twist on the history of the fashion designers in colour, we’ll look at Paco Rabanne, the first fashion designer to use black models in a catwalk show. As a result, he was almost thrown out of the Chambre Syndicale de la Couture Parisienne, the governing body of Parisienne fashion.
 |
| Paco Rabanne fasion show and Donyale Luna wearing Paco Rabanne The Spain-born designer made a name for himself in the 1960s with his space-age inspired fashions. |
No comments:
Post a Comment