'Mr. Blackwell,' 86; skewered celebrities' fashion disasters

Cher was among the celebrities who topped Mr. Blackwell's worst-dressed list. He released the list 48 times. (Reed Saxon/Associated Press/File 2000)

LOS ANGELES - "Mr. Blackwell," whose annual "worst-dressed" list dinged movie stars, music icons, and European royalty and helped make him a household name, has died. He was 86.

Mr. Blackwell, whose first name was Richard, died Sunday afternoon at Cedars Sinai Medical Center of complications of an intestinal infection, said publicist Harlan Boll.

A onetime actor and model who turned to fashion design with limited success, Mr. Blackwell's rankings of what he considered the most dreadful in design helped to popularize the sort of dishy commentary that takes notable figures down a notch by poking fun at their style.

Marilyn Monroe, Sophia Loren, and Elizabeth Taylor made his list in the early 1960s. Taylor's "plump" figure and revealing clothes reminded him of "the rebirth of the zeppelin," he wrote in 1963. Loren, he wrote, dressed like "the Italian shop girls she portrays in movies."

More recently, Britney Spears and Paris Hilton, whom he called the "Screamgirls" and compared to "two peas in an overexposed pod," made the list.

This year Victoria "Posh Spice" Beckham topped his survey. It was his 48th annual list.

Brigitte Bardot, Barbra Streisand, Bette Midler, Dolly Parton, and Madonna took heat from Mr. Blackwell more than once. So did Queen Elizabeth. "From her majesty to her travesty," he wrote of her.

Mr. Blackwell gave his first annual assessment of celebrities and their tastes in 1960, placing Italian actress Anna Magnani, star of "The Rose Tattoo" and "Wild Is the Wind," at the top of his worst-dressed list. He credited her for being "one of the most distinguished actresses of our generation" but said she dressed in "tramp clothes." His comments were published in the American Weekly, a syndicated Sunday supplement magazine, after a reporter there called and asked him to name his 10 worst-dressed picks and to comment on them. Every year from then on he teased the famous, using "Mr. Blackwell" as a calling card.

He had launched his clothing business, House of Blackwell, in 1958, teaching himself how to drape fabric on a model.

"The clothes were slightly overdone," recalled Sylvia Sheppard, a fashion editor for Women's Wear Daily during Mr. Blackwell's heyday. "He wasn't a creative designer."

But to be a fashion designer was never his top priority.

His finger-wagging fashion reports were a twist on the best-dressed lists that were popular in the 1940s and '50s. Fashion expert and author Patty Fox said recently that Mr. Blackwell was the first she knew of to take an irreverent approach.

While Mr. Blackwell claimed he was "not unkind," his critiques ranged from merely catty - "Words fail me!" he wrote in 1963 of screen ingenue Sandra Dee - to cutting. "Do-it-yourself kit with the wrong instructions!" he pronounced about the fashion taste of Hollywood sex kitten Elke Sommer in his 1973 list.

At times he published his choices for the best-dressed women of the year. Joan Crawford and Audrey Hepburn ranked in the 1960s, Nicole Kidman later on.

But it was his "worst" list that made Mr. Blackwell famous.

Some of Mr. Blackwell's targets fired back. When he took aim at country singer Barbara Mandrell in 1981 ("Yukon Sally playing the Alamo"), she sent him a jeweled lapel pin that spelled out "Big Mouth." He wore it proudly.