Zelda Valdes was born Zelda Christian Barbour 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. Around the same time, Valdes began working as a stock girl at a high-end boutique. Eventually, she worked her way up to selling and making alterations, becoming the shop's first black sales clerk and tailor. Looking back, Valdes said "It wasn't a pleasant time, but the idea was to see what I could do."Despite the struggles she experienced in her early experiences in the alteration industry, Valdes and her sister, Chez Valdes, opened the first African American owned Manhattan boutique in 1948.