lit a candle 1h agoMy grandmother had a Bob Mackie Barbie. She kept it on her shelf and told me he made dolls for every girl, not just some. I think about that a lot.
Their story
Robert Gordon Mackie, known worldwide as Bob Mackie, was an American fashion and costume designer whose sequined, feathered and rhinestone-laden creations defined television glamour for more than half a century. Nicknamed the Sultan of Sequins, the Rajah of Rhinestones and the Guru of Glitter, he dressed Cher, Carol Burnett, Diana…
Robert Gordon Mackie, known worldwide as Bob Mackie, was an American fashion and costume designer whose sequined, feathered and rhinestone-laden creations defined television glamour for more than half a century. Nicknamed the Sultan of Sequins, the Rajah of Rhinestones and the Guru of Glitter, he dressed Cher, Carol Burnett, Diana Ross, Mitzi Gaynor, Elton John, Tina Turner, Whitney Houston and countless other stars for stage, screen and the red carpet. He died on 14 September 2026 at the age of 87. His death was announced the same day on his Instagram account; Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, ABC News and other outlets confirmed the news. No cause of death was made public.
Mackie was born on 24 March 1939 in Monterey Park, California, to Charles Robert Mackie and Mildred Agnes Mackie (nee Smith). After his parents divorced he spent early childhood with his maternal grandparents in Alhambra, then lived with his father in Rosemead and attended Rosemead High School. He studied briefly at Pasadena City College and at the Chouinard Art Institute under fashion design head Eva Roberts, leaving without a degree when sketching work at Paramount Studios intervened. Between 1960 and 1963 he worked as a novice designer and assistant to costume designer Ray Aghayan. He also sketched for French couturier Jean Louis, including the original sketch of the flesh-coloured beaded dress Marilyn Monroe wore when she sang Happy Birthday to President John F. Kennedy at Madison Square Garden in 1962, and assisted Edith Head on films including Donovan's Reef and A New Kind of Love.
His first full-show client was Mitzi Gaynor, who hired him in 1966 for her Riviera Las Vegas revue. Gaynor's nude-illusion souffle gowns and network specials launched a fifty-year collaboration and earned Mackie early Emmy recognition. Carol Burnett then brought him onto The Carol Burnett Show for its entire eleven-year run. Burnett later estimated that he designed some 17,000 outfits for the series, from evening gowns to comic character clothes. His most famous Burnett gag was the curtain-rod Scarlett O'Hara dress for the 1976 Went with the Wind! sketch, a Gone with the Wind spoof later acquired by the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History. Parallel work for The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour, Cher and The Sonny and Cher Show made Cher's midriff-baring, bead-heavy television wardrobe a weekly event; a reported wardrobe budget of about 30,000 dollars an episode underwrote the spectacle.
Film nominations followed. With Aghayan he earned Academy Award nominations for Lady Sings the Blues (1972), Funny Lady (1975) and Pennies from Heaven (1981). He designed Elton John's Donald Duck, sequined Dodgers and Mozart concert looks, Whitney Houston's splashy award-show gowns, and lavish costumes for Las Vegas spectacles including Hallelujah Hollywood and Jubilee!. In March 1986 Cher wore his black chain-link top, bejeweled loincloth, stretch pants, boots and towering feathered Mohawk headdress to the Academy Awards, one of the most photographed red-carpet ensembles of the decade. He later won Primetime Emmys for Cher: Live in Concert From Las Vegas (2000) and Cher: The Farewell Tour (2003), among nine competitive Emmy wins from more than thirty nominations, and in 2002 became the first costume designer inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame. In 2019 he won the Tony Award for Best Costume Design in a Musical for The Cher Show. The CFDA gave him its Geoffrey Beene Lifetime Achievement Award in 2016; RuPaul presented him with the inaugural Giving Us Life-time Achievement Award on RuPaul's Drag Race in 2023.
Beyond television and theatre Mackie entered consumer fashion with ready-to-wear and long-running QVC Wearable Art and home collections, and from 1990 designed limited-edition Barbie dolls for Mattel, introducing varied hair, faces and ethnic styling that collectors still pursue. He partnered with Aghayan and Ret Turner in Elizabeth Courtney Costumes in Studio City. Clients across decades included Ann-Margret, Judy Garland, Liza Minnelli, Bette Midler, Dolly Parton, Madonna, Pink, Beyonce, RuPaul and many others. In 2024 the documentary Bob Mackie: Naked Illusion, directed by Matthew Miele and featuring Cher, Carol Burnett and RuPaul among others, revisited his career; in January 2026 the Palm Springs Art Museum honoured him at its Art Party gala with the exhibit Reflections of Glamour: Bob Mackie.
Mackie married singer and actress Lulu Porter (Marianne Wolford) in 1960; they divorced in 1963 and remained close. Their son, Robert Gordon Mackie Jr., known as Robin, a makeup artist, died in 1993 of an AIDS-related illness. From 1963 Mackie's life partner was Ray Aghayan; the two collaborated professionally through the 1970s and remained together until Aghayan's death in 2011. Later years brought renewed Cher tour and residency costumes, appearances as himself on television, and recognition that his showmanship belonged as much to comedy and pop performance as to couture. He liked to say that a woman who wears his clothes is not afraid to be noticed. That insistence on visibility, humour and craft is the through-line of a career that made sequins and feathers part of American popular memory.
Biography drawn from Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, ABC News, Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0), Britannica, the Television Academy Hall of Fame tribute, and contemporary reporting on his death.
Biography adapted from Variety; The Hollywood Reporter; ABC News; Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0); Britannica; Television Academy Hall of Fame; CNN; Los Angeles Times reporting.
In their own words
“A woman who wears my clothes is not afraid to be noticed.”
Often-cited Mackie remark, quoted in The Hollywood Reporter obituary and earlier profiles.
“I started it all, I'm afraid.”
On Cher's risque television outfits, Archive of American Television interview (c. 2000), quoted by Variety.
“You want the audience to be surprised when they walk out. You want them to swoon or ooh or ahh or clap.”
On showmanship and stage costume, quoted in The Hollywood Reporter obituary (14 September 2026).
“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.”
Official Instagram death announcement, 14 September 2026, quoted by Variety and ABC News.
“There are fashion designers, but they can't do costumes. And then there are costume designers that don't do fashion. But Bob does it all.”
Carol Burnett on Mackie, quoted in profiles including Hollywood Reporter coverage of his Barbie work.
“She liked turning heads, and she liked for people to disapprove.”
Mackie on Cher, Wall Street Journal interview (2005), quoted in The Hollywood Reporter obituary.
Photos
8Bob Mackie in 1975
Jan 1975 · by People Forever
Bob Mackie with Bette Midler, Elton John, Cher and Flip Wilson during taping of The Cher Show special, CBS Television City, 1975
Jan 1975 · by People Forever
Bob Mackie in 1975
Jan 1975 · by People Forever
Bob Mackie with Bette Midler, Elton John, Cher and Flip Wilson during taping of The Cher Show special, CBS Television City, 1975
Jan 1975 · by People Forever
Yes. That curtain dress was genius level problem-solving.