Picture Cher in a jeweled gown with a slit up the side. Picture Carol Burnett in a green velvet dress with the curtain rod still across her shoulders. Picture a Barbie in a gold sequined gown. All three are Bob Mackie, and for most of his career the man himself was a name fewer people could place than the faces wearing his work. He was called the “Sultan of Sequins.” He died Sept. 14, 2026, in Palm Springs, California, at 87.
A kid from Monterey Park with a sketchbook
Robert Gordon Mackie was born March 24, 1939, in Monterey Park, California. After his parents divorced he was raised partly by his maternal grandparents in Alhambra, and he went to Rosemead High School. He studied at Pasadena City College and spent a year at the Chouinard Art Institute under Eva Roberts. He never took a degree.
His first job was sketching at Paramount for Frank Thompson. The apprenticeship that mattered came next:
- 1960–63: assistant to costume designer Ray Aghayan at Paramount.
- 1963: hired by Edith Head for Donovan’s Reef and A New Kind of Love. He later said she taught him more about handling producers, directors and actors than about design.
- Also a sketch artist for the couturier Jean Louis.
The sketch behind Marilyn’s birthday gown
Working for Jean Louis put Mackie near one of the most famous dresses of the century. In 1962 Marilyn Monroe wore a gown to sing at President Kennedy’s birthday celebration at Madison Square Garden. The gown was Jean Louis’s. Mackie drew the original sketch for it. That is the precise way to say it, and it is also a fair preview of what followed: the finished piece often carried someone else’s name, while the drawing behind it was his.
Mitzi Gaynor, Las Vegas and the “nude illusion”
In 1966 Mitzi Gaynor hired Mackie to dress her show at the Riviera in Las Vegas. It was his first full show for a star, and it included her “nude illusion” gown, a soufflé-knit design. In 1969 he did the costumes for Diana Ross, the Supremes and the Temptations on G.I.T. on Broadway. Tom Ford told the Los Angeles Times in 2019 that many of the body-fitting, seemingly transparent and heavily beaded gowns worn on red carpets today are “derivative of his work for stars like Diana Ross and Cher.”
Seventeen thousand outfits for one comedienne
Mackie was the costume designer of The Carol Burnett Show from 1967 to 1978. Burnett has said he made roughly 17,000 outfits for the series. Asked what set him apart, she put it this way: “There are fashion designers, but they can’t do costumes.”
The best-known of the 17,000 is a joke you can hold in your hands. In the show’s Gone with the Wind parody, “Went with the Wind!,” Burnett wears a gown made from curtains, rod included. The dress is now in the collection of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History.
Cher, and the rest of the clients
If Burnett was the comic half of the Mackie story, Cher was the glamorous half. The partnership ran across decades:
- The 1970s: the designs of The Sonny & Cher Show.
- 1986: the Academy Awards, where Jane Fonda introduced her with, “Wait’ll you see what’s gonna come out here.”
- 2008–2011: the costumes for her Caesars Palace residency.
- 2019: the Tony Award for Best Costume Design in a Musical, for The Cher Show on Broadway.
Mackie also designed for the Las Vegas stage, with costumes for Hallelujah Hollywood at the MGM Grand (1974–80) and for Jubilee! (1981–2016). The client list reads like a history of American entertainment:
- Diana Ross, Barbra Streisand, Ann-Margret and Madonna
- Bette Midler, Elton John, Tina Turner and Dolly Parton
- Lucille Ball and Judy Garland
- Liza Minnelli, whose 2002 wedding dress he designed
- Vanna White, on Wheel of Fortune (2020)
The Barbie he gave a face
Mattel approached him in the late 1980s, and in 1990 the first limited-edition Bob Mackie Barbie arrived in a gold sequined gown. He was the first designer to work on Barbie’s face and hair as well as her wardrobe; the result is known as the “Mackie sculpt,” with a closed-mouth smile. He also insisted that the dolls reflect diverse ethnicities and traditional garb.
The honors
- Nine competitive Emmy Awards, from more than 30 nominations.
- One Tony Award, in 2019.
- Three Oscar nominations, for Lady Sings the Blues, Funny Lady and Pennies from Heaven. He never won.
- Costume Designers Guild Career Achievement Award, 1999.
- Television Academy Hall of Fame, 2002.
- TV Land Legend Award, 2005.
- Honored by the Palm Springs Art Museum on Jan. 24, 2026, in connection with its Reflections of Glamour: Bob Mackie exhibit.
He summed up the house style in a line the Hollywood Reporter quoted in its obituary: “A woman who wears my clothes is not afraid to be noticed.”
The private life
Mackie was married to LuLu Porter from 1960 to 1963. From 1963 until Aghayan’s death in 2011 his partner was Ray Aghayan, the designer he had first assisted at Paramount. His son, Robin Mackie, a makeup artist, died in 1993 at 33 of an HIV/AIDS-related illness. Mackie is survived by his granddaughter, Alyssa Townsend, and his great-granddaughters.
How he died, and why the story changed
Mackie died Sept. 14, 2026, at a hospital in Palm Springs. His publicist first told the Associated Press the cause was pneumonia, and early obituaries repeated it. A month later the Los Angeles Times reported that a death certificate obtained by Us Weekly told a different story, listing the cause as a subarachnoid hemorrhage and blunt head trauma.
According to the Times, citing Us Weekly, Mackie fell on Sept. 11 at the home of his longtime design director, Joseph McFate, where he was staying, and died days later. His representative told the outlet that he had been battling pneumonia at the time of the fall and that “a healthcare professional was with him when he fell.” The two accounts overlap rather than contradict: his representatives said he was ill with pneumonia, and the death certificate attributes his death to the hemorrhage and head trauma. The certificate also says he was cremated Sept. 17 and his ashes scattered off San Diego.
What the people he dressed said
Elton John wrote, “Every time I put something on that Bob made, I felt very, very special. His costumes were works of art, and he will go down as one of the most legendary designers ever in Hollywood.” Cher posted on X, “Bob has gone up to heaven. Knowing him, he’s bringing Sequins, Beads, & his sketch pad. Good nite sweet Prince.”