The acerbic American fashion critic known simply as Mr Blackwell, who invented the notorious annual Worst-Dressed List and lampooned everyone from Zsa Zsa Gabor to Britney Spears, has died in Los Angeles.

Mr Blackwell, who rarely used his first name, Richard, was a failed Hollywood actor turned little-known dress designer when he issued his first tongue-in-cheek list of Hollywood fashion disasters for 1960 – long before the likes of the blogger Perez Hilton turned such ridicule into a lucrative business.

His notoriety grew steadily over the years as he took Hollywood’s female celebrities to task for what he saw as their failure to dress in good taste. He described Meryl Streep as “looking like a Gypsy abandoned by a caravan”, and once remarked of Björk: “She dances in the dark – and dresses there, too.” His other famous fashion insults included calling Barbra Streisand “a masculine Bride of Frankenstein” and crowning Camilla Parker-Bowles “The Duchess of Dowdy”.

Mr Blackwell confessed to having mixed feelings about being the Simon Cowell figure of his day. He told a reporter that most of the women he attacked on his Worst-Dressed List were people he genuinely admired for their talent, if not their dress sense.

“The list is and was a satirical look at the fashion flops of the year,” he said in 1998. “I merely said out loud what others were whispering . . . it’s not my intention to hurt the feelings of these people. It’s to put down the clothing they’re wearing.”

In another interview earlier in his career, he said that designers were forgetting that their job “is to dress and enhance women. Maybe I should have named the ten worst designers instead of blaming the women who wear their clothes.”

One of Mr Blackwell’s most surprising victims was the newly married Diana, Princess of Wales, who topped his list for 1982. He said that she had gone from “a very young, independent, fresh look” to a “tacky, dowdy” style. She quickly redeemed herself as a regular on Blackwell’s list of Fabulous Fashion Independents.

Mr Blackwell did not always display the good humour that he expected from those on his Worst-Dressed List. In 1992 he sued the talk-show host Johnny Carson for saying that he had added Mother Teresa to his list. NBC, which broadcast Carson’s Tonight Show, said that the host was “obviously joking”. The judge dismissed the $11 million (£6.5 million) lawsuit.

During its heyday Mr Blackwell’s annual list was an eagerly anticipated media event. On the second Tuesday in January he would assemble reporters at his mansion for a lavish breakfast before making a dramatic entrance for the TV cameras. Over recent years the list became nothing more than an e-mailed press release.

Born Richard Sylvan Selzer in 1922, Mr Blackwell recounted in his autobiography, From Rags to Bitches, that he had suffered a troubled, poverty-ridden childhood in which he was variously a truant, thief and prostitute. He died on Sunday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Centre of complications from an intestinal infection. He was 86.

Acerbic wit:

Cameron Diaz: “Looks like she was dressed by a colourblind circus clown, and when it comes to fashion, it's chaos when Cameron's back in town.”

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