Lifestyle
Bob Mackie, the costume designer whose sequinned gowns and towering headpieces defined the look of American entertainment for more than fifty years, has died at the age of 87. His family shared the news through his official Instagram account, describing a man who spent his life doing exactly what he had always wanted, and whose designs would go on bringing beauty into the world long after he was gone. No cause of death has been given.
Born Robert Gordon Mackie in Monterey Park, California, in March 1940, he trained at Pasadena City College and the Chouinard Art Institute before entering the industry as a sketch artist for Jean Louis and later as an assistant to Edith Head, two of the most respected names in Hollywood costume design at the time. It was through this early apprenticeship that he met Ray Aghayan, who became both his professional partner and his life partner, and together the pair built a body of work that included the 1966 television special Alice Through the Looking Glass, for which they won the first Emmy ever awarded for costume design.
His career gathered pace when Mitzi Gaynor brought him on to design for her Las Vegas revue and television specials, work that in turn caught the attention of Carol Burnett and led to an eleven-season collaboration on The Carol Burnett Show. It was there that he created what may be his most quoted piece of costume history, the curtain rod Scarlett O’Hara dress worn by Burnett in the Went With the Wind sketch, a send-up of the green curtain gown from Gone With the Wind that has remained a touchstone of television comedy ever since. Burnett would later say that Mackie’s costumes helped her find the characters she played, and that his instinct for humour sat comfortably alongside his gift for glamour.
It was his partnership with Cher, however, that carried his name furthest beyond the entertainment industry itself. Mackie dressed her for The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour and for decades of concert tours and red carpet appearances, including the sheer black ensemble with its jewelled loincloth, chain link top, and feathered Mohawk headpiece that she wore to the 1986 Academy Awards and that remains one of the most discussed Oscar looks in the ceremony’s history. Their collaboration earned him two Emmy Awards, and his contribution to the later stage production The Cher Show brought him a Tony Award in 2019.
Across his career Mackie received three Academy Award nominations, for Lady Sings the Blues, Funny Lady, and Pennies From Heaven, and more than thirty Emmy nominations in total, of which he won nine. In 2002 he became the first costume designer inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame, a recognition of a body of work that spanned film, television, and theatre and that helped define what spectacle could look like on an American stage.
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