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Mark Kennedy
Updated ,first revealed
Bob Mackie, the style designer whose visually provocative Hollywood model outlined glamour for the Seventies – together with placing Carol Burnett in a few of her kookiest outfits and Cher in her raciest ones – died on Monday (US time). 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 stated.
Dubbed the “Designer to the Stars”, Mackie received 9 Emmy Awards, a Tony Award and was nominated for 3 Oscars, together with one for Barbra Streisand’s Funny Lady, wherein she wore a sheer batwing robe. He was inducted into the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences’ Hall of Fame in 2002.
He designed robes for Madonna, Streisand, Sharon Stone, Diana Ross and Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and live performance costumes for Pink. When Marilyn Monroe delivered a breathy, seductive tackle Happy Birthday at a fundraiser for President John F. Kennedy and the Democratic National Committee, she did it in a sheer, beaded robe that Mackie dreamt up in a sketch.
His affect might be seen within the kinds of Kendall Jenner and Bella Hadid. His archival items are worn at the moment by the likes of Anya Taylor-Joy, Miley Cyrus and Zendaya, the latter who wore a Mackie robe to honour Cher on the 2024 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony. When Taylor Swift wished to appear to be a showgirl on the duvet of her 2025 album The Life of a Showgirl, she turned to some Mackie originals.
Sequins and embellishment had been pure instruments – different nicknames had been the Sultan of Sequins, the Rajah of Rhinestones and the Guru of Glitter – however he had a easy motto: “You don’t try to change anybody, you just try to make them look better than ever,” he informed The Associated Press in 2018.
Tributes got here from fellow designers and people fortunate sufficient to put on his outfits. Actor Kristin Chenoweth referred to as him a “legend” and designer Isaac Mizrahi wrote, merely, “heartbroken”. Actor Alyssa Milano referred to as 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 additionally created costumes for Burnett within the revue Putting It Together, Debbie Reynolds in Debbie in 1976, Liza Minnelli in Minnelli on Minnelli in 1999 and, most not too long ago, the solid of The Cher Show, successful his Tony Award.
Mackie was a southern California native and embraced the concept of Hollywood film glamour as a younger little one, impressed by Technicolour musicals. He would dream elaborate costumes for his mom and sister and sketch them, and he was energetic in costume and set design of his highschool performs. He went to Pasadena City College to check promoting and illustration, after which costume design at LA’s Chouinard Art Institute.
He additionally grew up a fan of all of the variety-show and pop stars of the Nineteen Fifties and ’60s and particularly their glitzy wardrobes. He went to work for costume designer Edith Head, then bought the gig for The Carol Burnett Show.
He and Burnett had an in depth friendship and collaborated on memorable characters similar to Nora Desmond, Eunice and her tackle Scarlett O’Hara in Gone With the Wind – referred to as Starlet O’Hara – sporting her inexperienced curtain gown on its rods. “I love doing funny things,” Mackie stated 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 gown is now a 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 present and took a liking to him. He had stated that her Laverne character, together with her leopard-print jumpsuit and dangling earrings, was one among his favourites.
He and Cher took a a lot sexier flip when she moved to films and was invited to the Academy Awards. All these beaded, belly-baring numbers she’d put on on the stuffy purple carpets got here from Mackie.
Mackie attended the 1974 Met Gala with Cher on his arm wearing what is probably one of the well-known so-called bare attire of all time: a sheer beaded robe with white feathered sleeves and a white feathered skirt. She and the gown ended up on the duvet of Time journal.
Looks such because the 1986 beaded spiderweb – worn with complementary Mohawk – and the hardly there robe she wore for her finest actress win in 1988 turned heads and set tongues wagging on the time.
“The outfits are sometimes mistaken for fashion, but they’re costumes like for a character in a play,” Mackie informed the AP in 1999. “I want people to have fun. I want people to say, ‘Wasn’t that interesting?’ or, ‘Wasn’t that wild?’”
Mackie had some retail success within the Eighties and ’90s, launching a ready-to-wear line in 1982 that will in the end land on the runway at New York Fashion Week, and he was an early companion of QVC.
Naked attire solely bought extra standard however 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 any more,” he informed 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 additionally created dozens of various Barbie dolls for Mattel, with all kinds of face sculpts, physique varieties and storylines. He is credited as the primary designer to create a whole doll. One was Lady Dracula Cher, with little child fangs and her field resembling a coffin.
The documentary Bob Mackie: Naked Illusion debuted in 2024. A Mackie gown Cher wore in 1975 was auctioned off in 2024 for $US101,600, 25 instances its unique estimate.
Mackie was married to showgirl Lulu Porter from 1960 till 1963; their son, make-up artist Robert Gordon Mackie Jr., died from AIDS at age 35. Costume designer Ray Aghayan, Mackie’s longtime companion, died in 2011.
Mackie had stated practicality was by no means a driving power in his design: “It’s all about looking good and living your fantasies.”
In 2017, a 71-year-old Cher as soon as once more turned heads, wearing two Mackie specials on the Billboard Music Awards. It was a blast from a special period, not like the boring style world he noticed.
“Nothing is very interesting any more,” he informed 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 any more.”
AP
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