Bob Mackie, fashion designer to the stars, dies at 87

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.

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.

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.”

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 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.

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.”


(AP Photo Chris Pizello)