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https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/14/style/bob-mackie-dead.html
Bob Mackie, Designer Who rCyDressed Every Spangly Woman in Show Business,rCO Dies at 87
His sequined gowns and outrageous costumes threw clouds of glitter at
American fashion for over half a century.
By Penelope Green
Sept. 14, 2026
Updated 3:19 p.m. ET
Bob Mackie, the exuberant costume and fashion designer whose glittering, beaded, sequined, rhinestoned, feathered and often winged creations
bedecked, bedazzled and elevated performers like Carol Burnett, Diana
Ross, Tina Turner, Bernadette Peters, Bette Midler, Mitzi Gaynor, Liza Minnelli, Elton John, RuPaul and, most memorably and enduringly, Cher rCo as well as an 11-+-inch model named Barbie rCo died on Monday in Palm Springs, Calif. He was 87.
The death, at a hospital, was caused by pneumonia, Joe McFate, Mr.
MackierCOs longtime design director, said.
rCLHe dressed every spangly woman in show business,rCY Frank DeCaro, the author of rCLUnmistakably Mackie: The Fashion and Fantasy of Bob MackierCY (1999), said in an interview. rCLYou can mention some of the greatest names
in fashion, and the average person wonrCOt be able to conjure up, for
example, a Giorgio Armani suit. But if you say to an American of a certain age, rCyWhat is a Bob Mackie?,rCO they know exactly what yourCOre talking about.rCY
Mr. Mackie got his start in Hollywood, dropping out of college to sketch
for the costume designers Jean Louis and Edith Head, but it was television that made his name. When Carol Burnett put together her variety show in
1967, she picked Mr. Mackie to design the costumes. At the time, he was in
his late 20s rCo though he looked about 12, Ms. Burnett often said. Over the showrCOs 11 seasons, he created an average of 60 costumes a week for Ms. Burnett, Harvey Korman, Vicki Lawrence, Tim Conway and Lyle Waggoner, as
well as the showrCOs guest stars and supporting performers.
The skits, of course, were comedic gold, and Ms. Burnett said that she frequently found her characters through Mr. MackierCOs designs. For Mrs. Wiggins rCo the dim and indifferent secretary whom rCLthe I.Q. fairy never visited,rCY in Ms. BurnettrCOs words rCo he assembled a frosty blonde wig, a push-up bra and a tight black skirt that wasnrCOt quite tight enough for Ms. BurnettrCOs lanky frame. rCLStick your behind back into it,rCY he instructed her, and the characterrCOs mincing walk was born.
The show was known for its zany movie parodies, and when it took on a
scene from rCLGone With the WindrCY (renamed rCLWent With the WindrCY) in which
the heroine, fallen on hard times, has a dress made out of her curtains,
Mr. Mackie asked the prop department for a curtain rod so he could fashion
his own version for Ms. Burnett as rCLStarlet OrCOHara.rCY (It was such an instant, irresistible sight gag that Ms. Burnett made sure to warn Mr.
Korman, playing rCLRatt Butler,rCY beforehand so he wouldnrCOt lose his composure onstage.)
rCLThat gown is gorgeous,rCY Ratt exclaimed in the skit.
rCLThank you,rCY Starlet replied. rCLI saw it in the window and I just couldnrCOt
resist it.rCY
Mr. MackierCOs curtain dress is now in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of American History in Washington.
Television variety shows were the closest thing to movie musicals, as Mr. Mackie liked to say, particularly in the 1970s; they were nightly extravaganzas that delivered high-wattage stars and over-the-top,
glamorous fashion to AmericarCOs living rooms.
Sonny Bono and Cher had veered from their folk roots and were playing Las Vegas when CBS hired them to do a weekly show. Mr. Mackie had seen photos
of them, and as he told Vogue, which put together an oral history of the designer in 2019, rCLThey were kind of like New Age cave people. There they were in their fur vests and funny pants and belts and just a whole look
that nobody had had up until that time.rCY
The producers, he added, didnrCOt know what to do with Cher, but Mr. Mackie did. (He noted that she was built just like Ms. Burnett, a perfect size 6
with no cleavage: a human clothes hanger.) Their collaboration, first on rCLThe Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour,rCY which ran from 1971 to 1974, delighted television audiences and confounded the networkrCOs censors, as Mr. Mackie bared more and more of CherrCOs extraordinary physique in ever more
outlandish getups.
Mr. Mackie recalled a censor complaining of one outfit that revealed the undersides of CherrCOs breasts (the industry term was rCLunderboobrCY).
rCLWell, if we stand her on her head,rCY he retorted, rCLit will just be cleavage.rCY
Later, Cher became the first person allowed to show her belly button on television.
rCLPeople can watch a show and see people stealing hubcaps and then they can go out and steal hubcaps,rCY she told TV Guide, rCLbut I donrCOt think my show will provoke anybody into stealing a belly button.rCY
Reviewing rCLCher,rCY her post-divorce variety show that ran for 11 months in 1975-76, Newsweek declared that the performer rCLplayed second banana to the showrCOs real star rCo a cool, hip, certifiably freaky costume designer named Bob Mackie. Television hasnrCOt shown so much glitter and flash since NBC
did a special on LiberacerCOs closet.rCY
As Mr. DeCaro observed, rCLHe brought glamour to a sequin-starved America.rCY
In the process, Mr. MackierCOs name became a gay touchstone. rCLFor gay kids sitting at home like me or RuPaul, looking for a way out of our drab surroundings, Bob Mackie was the portal,rCY Mr. DeCaro said. rCLHe made women look like drag queens, but in the best possible sense. He was a window
into a glamorous, funny, inclusive glitter world. For me, the ultimate
Mackie moment was when the first Cher special ended in a sea of white balloons, and itrCOs Bette Midler, Elton John, Flip Wilson and Cher, all dripping with mirror tiles and looking like glamorous disco balls come to life.rCY
And yet Mr. Mackie rCo preternaturally boyish, always soberly dressed in his uniform of button-down shirts and khaki pants, like he had stepped out of
a Ralph Lauren ad rCo looked as if he would be allergic to sequins.
Robert Gordon Mackie was born in Monterey Park, Calif., a bit east of
downtown Los Angeles, on March 24, 1939. That was the year, he liked to
say, that rCLGone With the Wind,rCY rCLThe WomenrCY and rCLThe Wizard of OzrCY came
out.
His father, Charles Robert Mackie, who worked at Bank of America, and his mother, Mildred Agnes (Smith) Mackie, a homemaker, divorced when he was
young, and he was raised by his paternal grandmother, Bessie Ida Mackie,
in Alhambra, Calif. Her house, he recalled, was on a busy highway with not much neighborhood, and he was often alone, and lonely. He drew to
entertain himself.
rCLI was a weird kid,rCY he told Vogue in 1990. rCLBut I was always pretty good
with crayons.rCY
His mother and his older sister, Patricia, would visit on weekends and
take Bob to the movies rCo Technicolor musicals, mostly, that entranced him. rCLIt didnrCOt look like that at my house, and I wanted to be part of that,rCY he said. He remembered being dazzled by the dance numbers in rCLAn American
in Paris.rCY When the credits rolled at the end, he discovered that costume design was a job.
Mr. Mackie attended Pasadena City College and then the Chouinard Art Institute, now part of the California Institute of the Arts, before
dropping out to work on movies, first with Fred Thompson, then Mr. Louis
and Ms. Head. (Mr. Mackie sketched the skintight gown that Mr. Louis made
for Marilyn Monroe when she sang rCLHappy BirthdayrCY to President John F. Kennedy in 1962.)
In 1963, he was hired by Ray Aghayan, an Iranian-born designer who was
working on Judy GarlandrCOs television variety show. The two became business and romantic partners, sharing the first Emmy ever awarded for costume
design, in 1967, for their work on rCLAlice Through the Looking Glass,rCY an eye-popping confection of a television movie.
The pair received Oscar nominations for rCLLady Sings the Blues,rCY the 1972 biopic of Billie Holiday starring Ms. Ross, and for rCLFunny Lady,rCY the 1975 sequel to rCLFunny Girl.rCY Mr. Mackie was nominated on his own for rCLPennies From Heaven,rCY the 1981 film musical starring Steve Martin and Ms. Peters.
He won an Emmy in 1999 for CherrCOs costumes in rCLCher: Live in Concert From Los Angeles,rCY and again in 2003, for rCLCher: The Farewell Tour.rCY
A brief marriage to Marianne Nicholson, an actress whose stage name is
Lulu Porter, ended in divorce in the early 1960s. Their son, Robert Gordon Mackie Jr., who was known as Robin and worked as a makeup artist, died of
AIDS in 1993. Mr. Aghayan died in 2011. Mr. MackierCOs survivors include a granddaughter and two great-granddaughters.
In the early 1980s, Mr. Mackie began designing ready-to-wear. A decade
later, he created a line of clothing and home furnishings for QVC, the shopping channel. While critics enjoyed the high camp factor of his cinema-siren clothes and the theatricality of his fashion shows, he was
often derided for being not an authentic fashion designer, although his clothes were meticulously made, like couture garments.
rCLSubjecting Mr. Mackie to serious fashion criticism is a little like
asking Ada Louise Huxtable to meditate on Malibu BarbierCOs dream house,rCY Ginia Bellafante of The New York Times wrote, reviewing his 2002 fashion
show.
Yet Mr. Mackie was proud to design for that diminutive doll, which he
began doing in 1982, creating outfits as exotic and outrageous as those he made for his human muse, Cher. Goddess of the Sun Barbie, out in 1995, has 11,000 sequins on her hand-sewn gown.
rCLThey called him Barnum Bob, the Raja of Rhinestones and the Sequined Sheik,rCY Mr. McFate said. rCLThey thought of him as a Hollywood guy. It was hard for him to get a footing on Seventh Avenue.rCY
In 2001, the Council of Fashion Designers of America gave Mr. Mackie an
award for rCLfashion exuberance.rCY In 2019, he earned the organizationrCOs lifetime achievement award. That same year, he won a Tony for the costumes
in the Broadway musical rCLThe Cher Show,rCY a dizzying, giddy paean to the performer and her style.
As he told Vogue, rCLFor a long time everyone just thought all I knew how to do were CherrCOs dresses, you know, with her tummy out and showing half her whatever.rCY
He added, rCLI always just sort of pray in my life somebody will give
me a nice 19th-century movie or a good 1930s Depression film.rCY
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