There’s only one reason why we even slightly enjoy coming back to work after our Christmas break, and that’s Mr Blackwell.
For the last 35 years, the highlight of January has been Mr Blackwell’s worst-dressed list – a bewilderingly written, mostly-alliterative rhyme-heavy blizzard of celebrity nastiness that couldn’t have sounded any more camp if it was read aloud by a talking buttplug in a feather boa at a Cher concert.
But Mr Blackwell won’t be writing a worst-dressed list for 2009, because Mr Blackwell has died of complications from an intestinal infection. It’s a sad day for sure but, who knows, maybe one day scientists will find some of Mr Blackwell’s blood inside a mosquito that’s been trapped in amber and splice his DNA with frogs to create a theme park where all the exhibits run around telling you that your blouse looks crap.
Mr Blackwell was a myth wrapped in an enigma. You might occasionally think of yourself as a myth wrapped in an enigma too, but chances are that if you are, Mr Blackwell would have noticed the enigma you’re dressed in and called it ‘enig-moronic overkill that’s simply over-the-hill – a tacky terror from head to toe’. Because that’s just what Mr Blackwell did. Every single bloody year.
Not any more, though, because even though his annual worst-dressed list was the basis for the story we most look forward to writing every single year, he’s died. What a selfish old bastard. AP reports:
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 at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center of complications from an intestinal infection, publicist Harlan Boll said.
While Mr Blackwell will be best-remembered for his worst-dressed list – the influence of which can be felt everywhere, from fashion magazines to every single Sex And The City script to websites like this – that’s not all Mr Blackwell did with his life. He says he invented jeans for women, for example, plus he used to be a prostitute. And, um, that’s about it.
But without Mr Blackwell and his worst-dressed list, the world will be a sadder, more alliteration-free place. Now is not the time to be upset by this news, though – by dying now, Mr Blackwell has left us one of the greatest gifts we think we’ve ever been given.
Because he wasn’t able to update his worst-dressed list before he passed away, Mr Blackwell has effectively made sure that Victoria Beckham will be the worst-dressed woman until the end of time itself.
We’re misty-eyed with gratitude.