Bob Mackie Dies: Fashion Designer To The Stars Who Dressed Cher, Carol Burnett And Many More Was 87 — SkimNews
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- Bob Mackie died Monday at 87, with the announcement posted to his social media feeds; he had been working since the early 1960s as a sketch artist in Hollywood
- Mackie earned three Oscar nominations — for Funny Lady and Lady Sings the Blues (both with partner Ray Aghayan) and Pennies From Heaven — and won nine Emmys across his career
- Mackie and Aghayan won the first Emmy ever awarded for costume design in 1967 for Alice Through the Looking Glass, and Mackie later served as costume designer for The Carol Burnett Show's entire 11-year run
- Mackie won a Tony in 2019 for The Cher Show, a partnership that began on The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour and produced the 1974 Met Gala gown that put Cher on the cover of Time Magazine
- Mackie also sketched Marilyn Monroe's beaded white dress worn to sing 'Happy Birthday' to President Kennedy and dressed Barbra Streisand in the batwing gown for Funny Lady
- Beyond celebrity costuming, Mackie launched a 1982 ready-to-wear line, helped pioneer QVC's early Wearable Art Collection, and designed Barbie dolls for Mattel
Why it matters: Mackie's death removes the last living link to a vanishing era of hand-built Hollywood costuming — from Monroe's 1962 JFK moment to Cher's 1970s red-carpet reinventions. His QVC line and Mattel Barbie collaborations also marked one of the first times a celebrity couturier built a mass-market brand, predating today's designer-to-consumer pipelines.
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