Bob Mackie, designer to the stars who dressed Cher and Marilyn and defined ’70s glamour, dies at 87

NEW YORK (AP) — Bob Mackie, the fashion designer whose visually provocative Hollywood style defined glamour for the 1970s — including putting Carol Burnett in some of her kookiest getups and Cher in her raciest ones — died Monday. He was 87.

“He lived his 87 years to the fullest, fulfilling his dream of being a Fashion and Costume Designer, which is all he ever wanted to do,” read a statement on his social media accounts. Mackie died in Palm Springs, California, from pneumonia, his publicist said.

Dubbed the “Designer to the Stars,” Mackie won nine Emmy Awards, a Tony Award and was nominated for three Oscars, including one for Barbra Streisand’s “Funny Lady,” in which she wore a sheer batwing gown. He was inducted into the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences’ Hall of Fame in 2002.

He designed gowns for Madonna, Streisand, Sharon Stone, Diana Ross and Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and concert costumes for Pink. When Marilyn Monroe delivered a breathy, seductive take on “Happy Birthday” at a fundraiser for President John F. Kennedy and the Democratic National Committee, she did it in a sheer, beaded gown that Mackie dreamed up in a sketch.

Bob Mackie’s style influences Miley Cyrus and Taylor Swift

His influence can be seen in the styles of Kendall Jenner and Bella Hadid. His archival pieces are worn today by the likes of Anya Taylor-Joy, Miley Cyrus and Zendaya, the latter who wore a Mackie gown to honor Cher at the 2024 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony. When Taylor Swift wanted to look like a showgirl on the cover of her 2025 album “The Life of a Showgirl,” she turned to some Mackie originals.

Sequins and embellishment were natural tools — other nicknames were the Sultan of Sequins, the Rajah of Rhinestones and the Guru of Glitter — but he had a simple motto: “You don’t try to change anybody, you just try to make them look better than ever,” he told The Associated Press in 2018.

Tributes came from fellow designers and those lucky enough to wear his outfits. Actor Kristin Chenoweth called him a “legend” and designer Isaac Mizrahi wrote, simply, “heartbroken.” Actor Alyssa Milano called him “one of the best that ever was.”

On Broadway, Mackie dressed the casts of “On the Town” in 1971 and “Moon Over Buffalo” in 1995. He also created costumes for Burnett in the revue “Putting It Together,” Debbie Reynolds in “Debbie” in 1976, Liza Minnelli in “Minnelli on Minnelli” in 1999 and, most recently, the cast of “The Cher Show,” winning his Tony Award.

Mackie was a Southern California native and embraced the idea of Hollywood movie glamour as a young child, inspired by Technicolor musicals. He would dream elaborate costumes for his mother and sister and sketch them, and he was active in costume and set design of his high school plays. He went to Pasadena City College to study advertising and illustration, and then costume design at LA’s Chouinard Art Institute.

He also grew up a fan of all the variety-show and pop stars of the 1950s and ’60s and especially their glitzy wardrobes. He went to work for costume designer Edith Head, then got the gig for “The Carol Burnett Show.”

Bob Mackie’s close relationships with Cher and Carol Burnett

He and Burnett had a close friendship and collaborated on memorable characters such as Nora Desmond, Eunice and her take on Scarlett O’Hara in “Gone With the Wind” — called Starlet O’Hara — wearing her green curtain dress on its rods. “I love doing funny things,” Mackie said in a 1999 interview with the AP. “One week I’d have to make Carol an unattractive postal worker, and who knows what I’d have to do the next.” (Starlet’s dress is now part of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History.)

Mackie’s TV work continued on “The Sonny and Cher Show,” after Cher had guest-starred on Burnett’s show and took a liking to him. He had said that her Laverne character, with her leopard-print jumpsuit and dangling earrings, was one of his favorites.

He and Cher took a much sexier turn when she moved to movies and was invited to the Academy Awards. All those beaded, belly-baring numbers she’d wear on the stuffy red carpets came from Mackie.

Mackie attended the 1974 Met Gala with Cher on his arm dressed in what is perhaps one of the most famous so-called naked dresses of all time: a sheer beaded gown with white feathered sleeves and a white feathered skirt. She and the dress ended up on the cover of Time magazine.

Looks such as the 1986 beaded spiderweb — worn with complementary Mohawk — and the barely-there gown she wore for her best actress win in 1988 turned heads and set tongues wagging at the time.

“The outfits are sometimes mistaken for fashion, but they’re costumes like for a character in a play,” Mackie told the AP in 1999. “I want people to have fun. I want people to say ‘Wasn’t that interesting?’ or ‘Wasn’t that wild?’”

Bob Mackie had mixed feelings on the naked dresses of today

Mackie had some retail success in the 1980s and ’90s, launching a ready-to-wear line in 1982 that would ultimately land on the runway at New York Fashion Week, and he was an early partner of QVC.

Naked dresses only got more popular but Mackie later in life was unimpressed. “You watch awards shows and say, ‘Oh, cover up! Put it away! Honey, I don’t need to see all of that!’ It gets to be so vulgar, you don’t even want to look at it anymore,” he told The Hollywood Reporter in 2024. “I was so bored watching The Met Ball — everyone exposing everything, the same look-alike dress — I shut it off. If you’ve seen one Kardashian, you’ve seen them all. And we have seen all of them.”

Mackie also created dozens of different Barbie dolls for Mattel, with a wide variety of face sculpts, body types and storylines. He is credited as the first designer to create a complete doll. One was Lady Dracula Cher, with little baby fangs and her box resembling a coffin.

The documentary “Bob Mackie: Naked Illusion” debuted in 2024. A Mackie dress Cher wore in 1975 was auctioned off in 2024 for $101,600, 25 times its original estimate.

Mackie was married to showgirl Lulu Porter from 1960 until 1963; their son, makeup artist Robert Gordon Mackie Jr., died from AIDS at age 35. Costume designer Ray Aghayan, his longtime partner, died in 2011.

He had said practicality was never a driving force in his design: “It’s all about looking good and living your fantasies.”

In 2017, a 71-year-old Cher once again turned heads, dressed in two Bob Mackie specials at the Billboard Music Awards. It was a blast from a different era, unlike the boring fashion world he saw.

“Nothing is very interesting anymore,” he told Vogue in 2017. “You just keep seeing the same thing over and over again and there are no surprises. Unfortunately, you don’t see much fashion anymore.”