It is our unfortunate duty to inform you that Mr Blackwell, died yesterday in Los Angeles, aged 86. He passed away due to complications with an intestinal infection.
 
Mr Blackwell (his infrequently used first name was Richard) started life as an actor, before turning to clothing design. However, what he will be best remembered for was his status as a fashion critic. From 1960 onwards, Mr Blackwell produced the legendary ‘Annual Worst Dressed Women List’ – year on year naming and shaming Hollywood’s most nefarious sartorial deviants. Most attractively, these almanacs were dependably saturated with scurrilous witticisms and downright venomous put-downs. A cursory flick through its pages might see Madonna branded a “bare-bottomed bore of Babylon", or Sharon Stone denounced as an “over-the-hill Cruella DeVille"; or perhaps most searing of all, Barbra Streisand designated as the “masculine Bride of Frankenstein.”
 
It seems fitting to end this piece there. Not with remarks on grief or aftermath, but with a cocktail of his zingers; the only way of giving this great man a proper obituary. Or as he would have preferred: an obitchuary.