Michael Roberts, the creative force of fashion, has passed away at the age of 75

David Kuhn, a longtime friend and literary agent for many of Mr. Roberts’ books, confirmed his death. The cause was not immediately found.

Born in Britain to an English mother and father from the Caribbean island of St. Lucia, Mr. Roberts was one of the few people in the fashion industry of his time. The Guardian of London once declared him “one of the styles of our time” and “fashion’s most revered renaissance man.”

In the late 1960s he began his career as a fashion columnist for London’s Sunday Times and quickly became known for his witty humour.

Of the collection by designer Adrian Cartmel, which was billed as “throwaway chic”, Mr Roberts said: “Some of it is really pretty” but “a lot has to be thrown away”. Commenting on other collections, “St. Laurent calls the narrow sign a tube; Karl Lagerfeld calls it his cave; I can see no light at the end.

Mr. Roberts maintained his Swiftian sensibilities throughout his career. But no matter how much they deserve it, he’s tired of his incessant jabs, and he’s proven to readers that they’re unbearable. He built an extensive creative career that took him to the fashion capitals of the world.

Mr. Roberts was a “bohemian othertime creative person,” magazine editor Tina Brown said in an interview, “so original and alive … everything about the culture.”

Brown, who met Mr. Roberts while writing for the Sunday Times, hired him as style and art director — “her No. 1 employee,” she said when she became editor-in-chief of British Tatler magazine. In one memorable cover, a high-society flashback, he dressed Vivienne Westwood, the designer who informed British fashion’s punk look, as British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

Mr Roberts told the Guardian: “There’s a tradition of comedy and farce that’s no better than what’s been going on in England. “I see no harm in doing this at Tatler; And it was well received by the readers. The only people who were not well received were the ushers, the lustful aristos, the obsessed, the middle and upper middle classes in the social hierarchy, and they came in a very sad way.

She followed Mr. Roberts Brown to Vanity Fair and later New York when she became editor-in-chief of both publications. In New York, he was the only person who received the portfolio of fashion director.

In the year Since 1996, according to the magazine, Mr. Roberts has created 23 New York covers — mainly for issues of style and design — in his trademark collage style. Like his writings, the cover art poked fun at what he saw as the vanity of the fashion industry. In the year In 1997 Entitled “Head Over Heels,” the cover features hand-cut bits of paper that depict models sporting vertically elevated stiletto heels—as well as sticks to keep them from falling off and bandages around their ankles.

Magazines including Condé Nast Traveler and many international publications, Mr. Roberts later returned to Vanity Fair as fashion and style director. In the year In 2008, then 15-year-old singer and “Hannah Montana” actress Miley Cyrus published a controversial cover photo of her bare back. The portrait, shot by photographer Annie Leibovitz, sparked an outcry with critics denouncing the underage star.

“I am European. I’m from London, I’ve lived in Paris, and I find it quite surprising that this has blown up like this,” Mr Roberts told Women’s Wear Daily at the time.

He continued: “The whole kiddie sex angle is unfortunately a vintage of other magazines that didn’t get that kind of picture.” “Teenagers can be seen in a very sensitive way on TV and in the cinema, and then photography, which is innocent for all intents and purposes, is blown out of the room like some ridiculous apotheosis. It’s a joke to me. But it’s not a joke because I don’t find it funny. I find it offensive.”

Beyond magazine publishing, Mr. Roberts helped Grace Coddington, the longtime creative director at American Vogue, write her memoir “Grace” (2012). He wrote, directed and co-produced “Manolo: The Boy Who Made Shoes for Lizards” (2017) about his longtime friend, shoe designer Manolo Blahnik.

Mr. Roberts’ collage art was collected in the volume “The Snippy World of New York Fashion Artist Michael Roberts” (2005). He has written and illustrated books for children, including “The Jungle ABC” (1998) and “The Snowman in Paradise” (2004). For adults, he wrote the alphabet book “Fashion Casualties: The Cathy Catalog of Stylish Casualties, A to Z” (2008), which was judged an “instant heritage” by a New York Times reviewer. The introduction probably includes the work:

But here, dear readers, we need

To contemplate the world of trends.

Divide egos, greed and lies.

That dazed fashion butterflies.

And then in a language full of sass

Avoid the vain, the mean, the crass.

Mr Roberts – whose full name could not be immediately confirmed – was born in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, south-east-central England, on October 2, 1947. His father, an engineer, died in 1960, London’s Daily Telegraph reported. His mother, a secretary, sent him to a series of boarding schools, Mr. Roberts recalls, being deeply unhappy.

In one of his few public comments about his early life, he said: “I was sent to a very, very difficult place where you can’t survive. “On the day I arrived, a boy hanged himself. Ironically, I started out hating it and loving it. You owe nothing to anyone. You only survive by your own wisdom, but if you survive, you know you’ve made it.

Mr Roberts later enrolled at an art school in the English town of Wycombe, where he studied fine art, graphic design and fashion. He won a fashion illustration competition and the prize was a trip to New York where he met figures including artist Andy Warhol and photographer Richard Avedon.

Mr. Roberts has moved frequently throughout his life, once telling The New York Times that “there is no place I can safely say I lay down my hat and call home. In recent years, he has lived in Sicily, capturing its people and landscape in two photography books, “Shots in Sicily” and “Island of Eternal Beauty.”

A list of survivors was not immediately available.

Before her death last year, Queen Elizabeth II named Mr Roberts a Commander of the Order of the British Empire for his contribution to fashion. In his book “Victims of Fashion” he describes his career in a couple of words:

The fashion world is often called

He lost space in his head.

And when it comes to getting in

He chooses a mirror for reflection.