Richard Blackwell, famed for his annual Worst Dressed List, has died at the age of 86 due to complications from an intestinal infection. His Worst Dressed List has been infamous for nearly 5 decades, providing fantastically mean laughs every year.
Last year, Blackwell took pot shots at Britney Spears and Paris Hilton, pronouncing them "two peas in an over-exposed pod...style-free and fashion deprived." He's also loved to hate Anna Nicole Smith ("Don't bother with a new designer, Anna, just hire a structural engineer") and Barbra Streisand ("She looks like a masculine Bride of Frankenstein").
Others he made fun of over the years:
Madonna: "The Bare-Bottomed Bore of Babylon."
Christina Aguilera: "A dazzling singer who puts good taste through the wardrobe wringer."
Meryl Streep: "She looks like a gypsy abandoned by a caravan."
Sharon Stone: "An over-the-hill Cruella DeVille."
Lindsay Lohan: "From adorable to deplorable."
Patti Davis: "Packs all the glamour of an old, worn-out sneaker."
Ann Margret: "A Hells Angel escapee who invaded the Ziegfeld Follies on a rainy night."
Camilla Parker-Bowles: "The Duchess of Dowdy."
Bjork: "She dances in the dark — and dresses there, too."
Spears: "Her bra-topped collection of Madonna rejects are pure fashion overkill."
Blackwell started out as poor Richard Sylan Selzer in Brooklyn back in 1922. He only finished 5th grade as far as education goes. He got typecast in Hollywood as one of the Dead End Kids, then started as a screen hero at RKO Studios in 1944. His film career never took off, so Blackwell went into personal management.
By 1957, though, the clothes he designed for his clients got far more notice than his clients' acting abilities. So he started his own label and the rest is history. He started the Worst-Dressed List as an alternative to the then-popular International Best Dressed List by fashion publicist Eleanor Lambert.
Blackwell said of his list: "The year the list came out everybody was mad as hell. They said, 'Who the hell does Blackwell think he is?' They made me a name." He joked that when it came time for his funeral some day, "Everyone will show up to see if I am really gone."
I know I'll miss Mr. Blackwell's annual list. He's one of the originators of snark, if you ask me. And there's not enough of that in the world. Hope there's lots of fashion debacles in Heaven to make fun of, Richard.
Source 1 | Source 2 | Photo
