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Thursday, Nov 26, 2009
On the 40th anniversary of the worst-dressed list, a writer recalls the acerbic designer -- and a beauty magazine assignment that went terribly wrong.
Jan 11, 2000 | And now, for the announcement that has celebrities everywhere quaking in their Manolos: Mr. Blackwell's 40th annual worst-dressed women list.
For four decades now, the alliteratively acerbic designer and self-appointed arbiter of taste has gleefully chronicled each year's fashion flops and tops. This is the guy, after all, who once likened Diana Ross to "a Martian meter maid," called Elizabeth Taylor "a boutique toothpaste tube, squeezed in the middle" and dubbed Linda Tripp "a sheepdog in drag."
When Blackwell announces his latest list of fashion victims, I'll take a moment, as I have for four years now, to recall the surreal afternoon I spent with him on a beauty magazine assignment that went disastrously (though hilariously) wrong.
"Hey," my editor at Allure had said, "we think it'd be funny for you to go to L.A. and hang out in a mall with Mr. Blackwell. Get him to comment on what real people are wearing! Take a few pictures, have him toss off a few quips. It'll be fun!"
When I phoned him to suggest the idea, Blackwell gushed that he'd be honored. As it happened, he'd be signing copies of his autobiography at a mall the following week. Why didn't I join him for a stroll and dinner beforehand?
So there we were, Friday afternoon at a Santa Monica mall: the 70-ish Blackwell; Robert Spencer, his genial partner of 40 years; a photographer and me. And things weren't going well. Not at all.
The mall, it turned out, was a terrible shock to Blackwell's senses. Gaping at the passersby, he suffered one Maalox moment after another. He winced, gasped, then held out his hands helplessly, as if begging for me to make it all go away. Shaking his head in disbelief, he muttered slowly: "These people ... are ... pigs!" Moaning "This is an army of garbage!" he threw up his hands and turned away, wailing, "I can't do this!"
Now I was the one feeling queasy, as I pictured the big blank space in the magazine where the story was supposed to go. Mercifully, Spencer pointed to his watch and suggested we get some dinner before the book signing. I closed my quipless notebook and followed them into a deli, quietly panicking over how to explain to my editors that their swell idea had fast turned into a Blackwellian nightmare.
As soon as we were seated, Blackwell launched unbidden into an account of his bruising childhood in a Depression-era Brooklyn slum and his years as a teenage prostitute.
"How could I be ashamed of it?" he shrugged, his eyes misting over. "I was hungry, and it was a way to get a quarter." His voice cracked. "Mother used to ask me where I had gone. I'd tell her I was out walking the rich people's dogs, and they gave me a quarter. What was I supposed to say -- that I was over in Central Park?"
I didn't know. What I did know was that this was not exactly what I'd expected to be chatting about with a glitzy designer-to-the-stars. But then, maybe I shouldn't have been surprised. After all, I'd just finished reading his autobiography, "From Rags to Bitches." Now out of print, the book was at once jaw-droppingly candid and unapologetically egomaniacal. And, like the catty curmudgeon himself, it was also weirdly compelling.
