Agasalhar um anjo: Zuzu Angel, luto e memória na ditadura militar brasileira

This article examines the work of fashion designer Zuzu Angel (1921-1976) from the perspective of mourning and collective memory during the military dictatorship in Brazil in the 1970s. To this end, we begin with a study of political conflicts in Brazil and of the forms of forgetting as a political strategy. Next, we consider how such processes ultimately originate a new language that confronts and recomposes the memorial narrative of history. Drawing on her creations in the field of fashion, fashion designer Zuzu Angel used textile allegories as a revolutionary vocabulary with the aim of establishing a memory of her mourning. Her creations highlighted the presence of violence in the public sphere, exposing the silencing tactics used by the Brazilian state. Our purpose is to present the forms of sensibilities that are transformed into synonyms of history and memory around mourning in the work of fashion designer Zuzu Angel. To this end, we will draw on authors such as Benjamin (1994), Traverso (2005) and Koselleck (2017). We hope to show how temporal experience manifests itself on the textile surface as a language that subverts mourning, proposing a new analysis of insurrection and image in the field of fashion.