Blackwell Has Words for a Few Fashion Statements : Oxnard: The designer puts on a show to benefit the symphony, dresses down some dressed-up attendees and also bares a personal redesign.

Mr. Blackwell may be best known for his annual lists of Hollywood’s best- and worst-dressed celebrities, but several hundred visitors to the Oxnard Hilton Hotel on Saturday discovered quickly that they weren’t immune either.

“I’m going to pick on you, and you can pick on me,” said Richard Blackwell, looking out at the chic, bejeweled crowd. “If you feel intimidated by my being acerbic, please get . . . out right now.”

More than 300 people paid $45 each for a sold-out luncheon fashion show to see designs by Blackwell, with proceeds going to the Ventura County Symphony. The collection ranged from silk, floral-print day wear to glittery evening gowns with feather boas.

“The attitude of so many designers is so poor. They think that going to Oxnard is so degrading,” Blackwell said in an interview. “But the same thing that drives me to do fashion shows in women’s prisons drives me to do it here: to share with someone who really has a need for it.”

Several attendees said they were unfamiliar with Blackwell’s designs and were more interested in seeing the man who made it a status symbol to be on his worst-dressed list.

Many, however, added that they were familiar with Blackwell’s reputation for choosing members of audiences and critiquing their outfits.

“We’re sitting up front, and we’re kind of nervous because we don’t want him to choose us,” Claudette Young of Thousand Oaks said before the show. “I already have my family to do that. I don’t need Blackwell.”

Katherine Young of Camarillo said she was nervous before she even left the house.

“I was looking at my eyebrows before I came here today, and I thought, ‘Oh my God, I can’t go,’ ” Young said.

But Blackwell, described by one attendee as “the Don Rickles of clothes designers,” said before the show that he never would “just come in and dress anyone down. I ask if anyone wants me to critique them. These are not show people. These are people who have done the best they could at that moment.”

Still he added, “Some of them are very well-dressed, and some have made some horrendous mistakes.”

For one, he says, women buy the clothes of many designers who “have lost their minds with these ridiculous styles. These chemises now are nothing but a long T-shirt. The things coming out of Paris are a joke.”

But lacking a personal style can also lead women astray. What may look good on one woman, he said, can be unflattering on another.

“I have seen some women wear a dress, and it looks terrible on them. And I can look around and find the right woman for that dress,” he said. “Very often the dress isn’t as bad as the way the woman has put it together: the wrong makeup, the wrong bag, the wrong shoes.”

But the most common fashion mistake, he said, is trying to change the wrong things.

“We want to change the cover to our book because some designer declares that our bust line isn’t big enough, or that to be flat is in,” he said.

Blackwell, however, doesn’t mind disclosing that he has redesigned his own cover a bit. A few years ago, he underwent several operations to correct drooping silicone pouches in his face, which had been injected to repair the ravages of lupus, a blood disorder. He later decided to undergo liposuction to remove fat cells from his waist and hips.

“I had it moved around to my fanny and my shoulders,” he said. “I love it. I’m not embarrassed about it at all.”

At the fashion show, Blackwell proudly lifted up his jacket and turned his back on the audience. “You’re looking at $35,000 worth of restoration,” he said to laughter and applause.

At one point, Blackwell turned to a woman seated near the runway who was wearing a brightly colored scarf.

“Do you have a headache?” he asked her as the crowd laughed. She shook her head. “Did your husband hit you? You’re not married? Oh, I understand that,” he said.

“I had cancer surgery,” the woman replied.

Blackwell offered profuse apologies. “I never would have picked on you if I’d known. I feel awful.” He paused. “But your necklace looks awful, and your bra is rotten . . . “

The crowd clapped. A few hands went up from volunteers offering to be assessed. And after the show, a long line of women filed into an adjacent room, where several of Blackwell’s dresses and accessories were for sale.

“He is divine,” said Teddy Getty Gaston, the former wife of J. Paul Getty. “He loves women’s bodies and gives them shape and a bust line. I haven’t been out of his clothes in 20 years.”