Zuzu Angel - Biography

Biography

As a child, Zuzu moved to Belo Horizonte, later living in Bahia. Bahian culture and colors significantly influenced the style of Zuzu's creations. In 1947, she went to live in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil's cultural capital.

In the 1950s, Zuzu began her work as a seamstress, usually making clothing for close relatives. At the start of the 1970s, she opened up a store in Ipanema, at the same time beginning to exhibit her clothes on American runways. In her fashion expositions, she always harnessed the joy and richness of the colors of Brazilian culture, making a name for herself in the fashion world of her time.

In the 1970s, her son Stuart, an activist against the military regime, was taken prisoner and killed by agents of the DOI-CODI. From then on, Zuzu would enter into a private war against the dictatorship for the recovery of her son's body, involving the Embassy of the United States, the native country of her former husband and Stuart's father. The battle ended with Zuzu's death in 1976 in a car crash. Stuart's body was never found. His mother's death was investigated by the Comissão de Mortos e Desaparecidos Políticos ("commission on political missing and presumed dead"), under process number 237/96, and the Brazilian government later admitted that the State was involved in her death.