Celebrity fashion critic Mr. Blackwell dies in Los Angeles
http://www.cbc.ca/arts/media/story/2008/10/20/blackwell-obit.html
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."
* 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."
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 for 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."
Surprisingly, the woman who topped his worst dressed list for 1982
(announced in early 1983) was the newly married Diana, Princess of
Wales. He said she had gone from "a very young, independent, fresh
look" to a "tacky, dowdy" style. She quickly regained her footing and
wound up as a regular on Blackwell's favourites list, the "fabulous
fashion independents."
Blackwell had started out as an actor himself, having been spotted by
a talent agent while still in his teens. He landed a job as an
understudy in the Broadway production of Sidney Kingsley's heralded
drama Dead End.
Although he got to the play the role of the Dead End Kids' leader on
stage only one time, it led him to Hollywood where he landed bit parts
in such films as Little Tough Guy (uncredited) and Juvenile Hall (as
Dick Selzer).
He abandoned his acting career in 1958 after failing to make it in
movies and switched to fashion design. He claimed to be the first to
make designer jeans for women, and his salon had begun to attract a
few Hollywood names when he issued his first list covering the fashion
faux pas of 1960. (Italian star Anna Magnani and Gabor were among his
early victims.)
It quickly brought him the celebrity he had long coveted, and he
quickly became a favourite on the TV talk show circuit. He also became
for a time, in his words, "The worst bitch in the world."
He hosted his own show, Mr. Blackwell Presents, in 1968 and appeared
as himself in such TV shows as Matlock and Matt Houston.
In 1992, he sued Johnny Carson for claiming that he had added Mother
Teresa to his list, saying the comment exposed him to hatred and
ridicule. NBC's response was that the Tonight Show host was obviously
joking.
"Did you see what he said about Mother Teresa? 'Miss Nerdy Nun is a
fashion no-no,"' Carson had said. "Come on now, that's just too much."
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.
Born Richard Sylvan Selzer in 1922, Blackwell recounted in his
autobiography, From Rags to Bitches, a troubled, poverty-ridden
childhood in which he was variously a truant, thief and prostitute.
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