Richard Blackwell, the man who famously skewered fashion lows annually by releasing a Worst Dressed List for the past 48 years, has passed away at the age of 86. Mr. Blackwell (as he came to be known) was a relatively unknown fashion designer before he started commenting on the fashion disasters of Hollywood celebs in 1960 and went on to achieve worldwide fame for his satirical and sometimes scathing comments on the fashion faux-pas of Hollywood’s elite. Sadly, Blackwell succumbed to an intestinal infection and passed away yesterday:
Mr. Blackwell, the acerbic designer whose annual worst-dressed list skewered the fashion felonies of celebrities from Zsa Zsa Gabor to Britney Spears, has died. He was 86. Blackwell died Sunday of complications from an intestinal infection, publicist Harlan Boll said. Blackwell, whose first name was Richard, was a little-known dress designer when he issued his first tongue-in-cheek criticism of Hollywood fashion disasters for 1960 — long before Joan Rivers and others turned such ridicule into a daily affair. Year after year, he would take Hollywood’s reigning stars and other celebrities to task for failing to dress in what he thought was the way they should. Being dowdy was bad enough, but the more outrageous clothing a woman wore, the more biting his criticism. He once said a reigning Miss America looked “like an armadillo with cornpads.” A few other examples:
Madonna: “The Bare-Bottomed Bore of Babylon.”
Barbra Streisand: “She looks like a masculine Bride of Frankenstein.”
Christina Aguilera: “A dazzling singer who puts good taste through the wardrobe wringer.”
Björk: “She dances in the dark — and dresses there, too.”
Spears: “Her bra-topped collection of Madonna rejects are pure fashion overkill.”
The critic acknowledged he had mixed feelings about appearing so publicly mean. Most of the women he put through the wringer, he said, were people he genuinely admired for their talent if not their fashion sense. “The list is and was a satirical look at the fashion flops of the year,” he said in 1998. “I merely said out loud what others were whispering. … It’s not my intention to hurt the feelings of these people. It’s to put down the clothing they’re wearing.” He told the Los Angeles Times in 1968 that designers were forgetting that their job “is to dress and enhance women. … Maybe I should have named the 10 worst designers instead of blaming the women who wear their clothes.” During his heyday the issuing of Blackwell’s annual list was an eagerly anticipated media event. On the second Tuesday in January he would assemble reporters at his mansion for a lavish breakfast before making a dramatic entrance for the television cameras. By the turning of the millennium, however, the list had lost its juice and Blackwell took to issuing it by e-mail.
While Mr. Blackwell’s list may have lost its “vigor” in the last decade or so, I contend that his contribution to pop culture is legendary. Blackwell was doing in the ’60’s what bloggers do on a daily basis today. Ages before the world was united by the Internet, Blackwell was basically saying aloud what others were saying quietly. I never took his comments as mean-spirited. It was clear to me that he injected as much humor in his comments as possible and even his most scathing pronouncements were not meant to hurt his subjects. It seemed to me that it was more of an honor to be on Mr. Blackwell’s Worst Dressed List than to not garner a mention at all. I, for one, will miss Blackwell’s annual list of fashion critiques. While I’m sure others will try, I don’t think he can ever truly be replaced.
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