Richard Blackwell and the great crimes of fashion

If a group of waspish social historians decided to map the development of a modern breed of royal known as The Celebrity, their source material would almost certainly include the "worst-dressed" lists compiled by the Los Angeles fashion commentator Richard Blackwell.

For almost half a century, "Mr Blackwell", as he is universally known, has published a robust assessment of the 10 public figures who over the course of the previous 12 months have been responsible for bringing the most outrageous crimes against fashion to the world's red carpets.

His top-tens, which are released each New Year, have turned Blackwell into a household name, famous for skewering the great-and-good with either straightforward insult (he once described Sharon Stone as "an over-the-hill Cruella DeVille") or affected high camp. In his heyday, their announcement was an eagerly awaited media event, which brought him as much celebrity as many of his subjects. He became a fixture on the television talk show circuit, hosted his own TV show, Mr Blackwell Presents, and had cameo roles in many of the TV dramas of the 1960s and 1970s.

Yesterday, however, it emerged that his colourful journey had come to an end, and that this year's edition of Mr Blackwell's Worst-Dressed List, topped by Victoria Beckham and Amy Winehouse ("exploding beehives above ... tacky polka-dots below ... she's part 1950s car-hop horror!"), will be his last.

After 48 years of delivering withering put-downs, the rudest fashion commentator in Hollywood's history has shuffled off to the great red carpet in the sky. Blackwell's publicist, Harlan Boll, announced that his 86-year-old client had died on Sunday in Los Angeles of complications from an intestinal infection. Though his passing is unlikely to be mourned by many of the highly strung celebrities he brought crashing back to earth, it will certainly mark the end of an era. When Blackwell began practising in 1960, supermarket magazines had yet to turn the mocking of celebrity fashions into daily fodder. Not only did he provide a refreshing antidote to the fawning commentary of contemporary glossies like Vogue, the identity of his various targets turned the lists into a sort of annotated history of modern celebrity.

In the 1960s, Mr Blackwell took to task the likes of Barbra Streisand ("she looks like a masculine bride of Frankenstein"), Princess Margaret and Zsa Zsa Gabor for failing to dress in the particular and elegant way he thought they should.

By the 1970s, he had turned his rhetorical howitzers on the likes of Patti Davis, who "packs all the glamour of an old, worn-out sneaker", Bo Derek and Farrah Fawcett. The 1980s provided ammunition for him to skewer Joan Collins and Cher: "A million beads and one over-exposed derriere."

The 1990s, meanwhile, saw Blackwell tear into Camilla Parker Bowles ("The Duchess of Dowdy") and the Spice Girls. Recent years have seen his list jollified by Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, and Britain's most headline-prone recent export to Hollywood, Victoria Beckham.

Blackwell's modus operandi was to pass judgement on stars in a manner that became more biting the more outrageous the clothing a woman wore. While being dowdy was merely unfortunate, Mr Blackwell believed that flamboyant fashion mistakes were unforgivable. Though some thought him unnecessarily cruel, Blackwell said that he genuinely admired the talent of most of the women he put through the wringer. He countered charges of sexism by including such men as Boy George and Howard Stern on his lists.

This year he showed a gentler side by deliberately leaving Britney Spears out of consideration, saying: "I felt that it was inappropriate at this time to make a comment when her personal life is in such upheaval."

Blackwell, who was born Richard Sylvan Selzer, said in his autobiography, From Rags to Bitches, that he came from a tough neighbourhood of Brooklyn and was variously a truant, thief and prostitute. He started out as an actor. However, an attempt to make it in movies after moving to Los Angeles in the late 1930s with his mother and brother came to nothing, and in 1958 he switched careers to fashion design.

His "big break" came in 1960, when a journalist for American Weekly rang his Beverly Hills store asking for his thoughts on the best and worst-dressed public figures of the year. Within weeks, the list had turned him into one of the world's most famous and talked-about style arbiters.

Blackwell was also less accomplished at taking criticism than he was at dishing it out. 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. The broadcaster NBC's response was that the Tonight Show host was obviously joking.

During his heyday the issuing of Mr Blackwell's annual list drew hundreds of reporters to the mansion he shared with Robert Spencer, his partner of 60 years.

By the turn of the millennium, however, the growing bitchiness of other media outlets meant that his list had lost much of its bite. In recent years he took to issuing it by email.