Suzie Zuzek

Suzie Zuzek (1920–2011) was an American artist and textile designer whose work was mainly seen in Lilly Pulitzer dresses, textiles and furnishings from the 1960s to the 1980s, and became exclusively associated with the brand until its closure in 1984. In the early 21st century, she was eventually acknowledged as the creator of some of the most widely recognized textiles of the 1960s and 1970s. A retrospective exhibition of her designs, curated in 2019 and shown in 2021 at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, both recognized the impact of her work, and brought her out of obscurity.

Early life Zuzek was born Agnes Helen Zuzek in 1920, to Yugoslavian immigrant parents. She grew up outside Buffalo, New York, and during World War II served in the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps. Afterwards, she studied textile design at the Pratt Institute where she was top of her class, and after graduating in 1949, went on to work for a New York fabric company, Herman Blanc.

Career

After marriage, Zuzek left Herman Blanc and between 1954–1955 she and her husband moved to Key West in Florida, but then separated. This left her a single mother to three daughters. She eventually found work as a textile designer for Key West Hand Print Fabrics, a small screen-printing company founded in 1961 by a gay couple, Peter Pell and Jim Russell,

In addition to the Zuzek designs in the Cooper Hewitt Museum, other museums holding Zuzek's work with credit include the RISD Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum. In 2023, Christie's auction house offered 43 of Zuzek's designs for sale.