Bob Mackie Dies: Fashion Designer To The Stars Who Dressed Cher, Carol Burnett And Many More Was 87

Bob Mackie, the Oscar-nominated and Tony- and Emmy-winning fashion designer who dressed Cher in her most eye-popping costumes, Barbra Streisand in her batwing gown in Funny Lady and sketched the design for Marilyn Monroe’s beaded white dress she wore to sing “Happy Birthday” to JFK, died Monday. He was 87.

The news was announced on Mackie’s social media feeds.

“It is with a heavy heart that we share the news that Mr. Bob Mackie passed away today,” it read. “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. His genius and extraordinary designs will live on forever, continuing to bring beauty into this world.”

The impact of Mackie, born in Monterey Park just east of Los Angeles who attended Pasadena City College, was and remains felt across the entertainment landscape from the time he began working in the biz in the early 1960s as a sketch artist.

He was nominated for three Oscars — including Streisand’s Funny Lady and Lady Sings the Blues with Diana Ross (both noms with collaborator and partner Ray Aghayan) and later for Pennies From Heaven — and won nine Emmys including for his work with Burnett and on Mama’s Family, the spinoff of a sketch on The Carol Burnett Show, the latter for which he was the costume designer during its entire 11-year run.

Mackie and Aghayan won the Emmy for Individual Achievements in Art Direction and Allied Crafts –
Costume Design for Alice Through the Looking Glass in 1967, the first Emmy ever awarded for costume design.

In theater, he won his Tony Award in 2019 for The Cher Show, part of a long association with the singer/actor that began back on the variety shows The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour and The Sonny and Cher Show, garnering him more Emmy noms. On Broadway he also costumed the likes of Burnett, Carol Channing, Liza Minnelli, Bernadette Peters and Debbie Reynolds.

But it was Mackie and Cher who flew highest, teaming for most of Cher’s iconic concert tour and red carpet looks — especially on the Oscars red carpet — that became her signature with their not-much-left-to-the-imagination designs that drew everyone’s eye. She in her Mackie gown she wore to the 1974 Met Gala made the cover of Time Magazine.

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

Mackie had his thimble in several projects, including creating a ready-to-wear line that debuted in 1982 and later gave a leg up to the early QVC; his brands featuring the QVC Wearable Art Collection and home furnishing collections launched in the 1990s. He also designed several Barbie dolls for Mattel that captured the fantasy spirit of his designs.

Among his lifetime accolades, he won the Costume Designers Guild’s Career Achievement Award for Television in 1999 and was inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame in 2022.