Sartorial Snark...With Style

Last Sunday marked the passing of one of our popular culture's quickest wits and sharpest observers: Mr. Blackwell. There he is, at right, with a truly awesome painting of himself hanging behind, um, himself. Love the glasses!

Mr. Blackwell was going at fashion's fiercest foibles decades prior to the Fug Girls, and put together "What were they thinking?!" lists before some of the writers at Us Weekly and Life & Style were even born. Dare I posit that he invented the practice of sartorial snark?

These days we're so used to seeing celebrities and fashionistas paraded before us in the media, only to be mercilessly picked apart by everyone from d-list celebrities to evening news anchors, that this type of criticism hardly seems novel. But when his annual list of Best and Worst Dressed premiered in 1960, nobody was doing that type of thing. Before the age of the Internet, Mr. Blackwell would hold a press conference at his house every January to announce the list publicly after an extravagant breakfast for the press. Can you imagine that type of thing occurring today?

Mr. Blackwell was always careful, though, to distinguish criticism of the clothes as separate from criticism of the person, a distinction not always made with today's snarkiest of commentators. That isn't to say, though, that he was kind about what he saw.

Ann-Margret took some serious hits in the 1960s, being called at various times, “Marlon Brando in a G-string,” "A Hells Angel escapee who invaded the Ziegfeld Follies on a rainy night," (you really have to break that one down piece by piece and think about it...), and "Moisten lips...hair in flips...boots and sequins...what a miss?"Judging from the sassy li'l ensemble she's sporting at left - sometime after the 1960s, I'm pretty sure - I think he's probably on to something!

No one was immune from his criticism, not even the Queen of England, about whom he once said, "From Her Majesty to Her Travesty" (heh-heh). A lucky few made their way from the worst list one year to the best list a few years later, including Princess Diana.

There were only a handful of names I didn't recognize at all, including Louise Lasser, who ranked number one on the worst dressed list in 1976. If her look was so bad, how could I not know about it, even if it was before I was born? A quick Google search should reveal some results. Just let me type in L-o-u...

Whoa!!

I, um, just...wow. That hairstyle sure is sumthin'! Apparently this was her "look" for a soap opera called Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman. I'd say it's a cross between a bowl cut and that cat wig from yesterday's post. Which makes it wrong on so many levels.

I couldn't find Mr. Blackwell's quote about her, but I'm sure it was a doozie.

The most famous actresses came under fire, too, including Meryl Streep, who ranked number one in 1986: "She looks like a gypsy abandoned by a caravan." Oh snap!

Even when he got older, Mr. Blackwell kept in touch with the current starlets and ingenues. In 1999 he called Fiona Apple - who ranked number five on Worst Dressed that year - "A kinked and curled Kewpie Doll wrapped in a collection of yesterday's fatal fashion frights." Oops!

But, as anyone who remembers her video for Criminal will recall, that's a pretty apt description. I think her hair in the picture at left really captures that whole grunge-y vibe of the late 90s. Ah, memories.

So that's that. The end of an era in examining fashion in a unique way that we probably won't see again. In honor of Mr. Blackwell's body of work, I've composed a little poem:

Mr. Blackwell, we will miss you and your sartorial snark, so full of wit and rhyme,
You were a man of Best and Worst Dressed Lists, very far ahead of your time.
And when again we gaze upon a celebrity in awkward dress or shoe or hat,
We'll utter to ourselves, "Oh my. Mr. Blackwell would have never let her get away with that!"

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