Zuzu Angel (6/5/1921-4/14/1976)

Friday’s post about the song “Angélica” by Chico Buarque referred to the activism of Zuleika Angel Jones, better known as Zuzu Angel. Angel was also a prominent designer who put Brazil on the map of international fashion. In mid-20th century Brazil, men dominated the fashion world. They called themselves costureiros (“tailors” or “dressmakers” or even “couturiers”) but those to whom the feminine version of that word, costureiras, was applied were dismissed as mere “seamstresses.” Zuzu Angel called herself a costureira though, in an effort to reclaim the term and put men and women on equal footing. She used it as equivalent to and interchangeably with estilista (“designer” or “stylist”), along with the English “fashion designer.”

Among the many events and articles marking the centennial of her birth earlier this year, the Estado de Minas said the following:

Mother of three children – Stuart, Ana Cristina, and Hildegard, the youngest, who is a well-known journalist – the woman from Minas Gerais married the Canadian (naturalized American) Norman Angel Jones, from whom she later separated. She was a designer, but liked to be called a costureira. Extremely intelligent, she used her position to denounce to the world the atrocities that were being committed in Brazil by the dictatorship’s political repression. Her fashion was known internationally, as were the evils of the government.

She was the one who put on the first protest pageant in the world. She showed everyone that fashion could do much more than dress people elegantly and with style, but that it had the power to raise important causes. With a simple large white dress, full of naïf embroidery, she represented an entire political situation. War tanks, soldiers, cannons, military hats were mixed with trees, flowers, a little house with a chimney, drums, birds, sad angels, black doves, and a square sun.

That dress was the main flag used by Zuzu Angel in the pageant-protest she put on in September 1971, at the home of the Brazilian consul-general in New York. Another intelligent play by the costureira, since at the time there was a decree that prohibited Brazilians from speaking ill of Brazil overseas. Zuzu smartly took her pageant to the home of the consul-general, which was considered Brazilian territory. That way she could not be accused by the military of complaining about Brazil in a foreign country.

At the end of the pageant, Zuzu entered the runway wearing a long black dress, a belt with 100 crucifixes hanging from it, and a collar with an enormous angel image. Next to her, two smiling models dressed in white accompanied her. In the background, her daughter Ana Cristina sang “Tristeza” (“Sadness”) … Her protest using fashion ended up in newspapers and magazines around the world.

You can see (a silent) part of the pageant from the TV Cultura archives on YouTube, where you can also see a recreation of the protest pageant, from the Zuzu Angel film.