PALM SPRINGS, California — Bob Mackie, the legendary costume and fashion designer whose feathers, rhinestones, illusion gowns and fearless sense of spectacle transformed generations of entertainers into larger-than-life stars, has died at 87.
Mackie died on Monday, September 14, in Palm Springs, California. His publicist said the cause was pneumonia, an update also confirmed by a representative to People.
His death closes an extraordinary chapter in Hollywood fashion — but Mackie’s unmistakable influence is unlikely to disappear with him.
For more than five decades, the designer helped construct the visual identities of some of entertainment’s biggest names, most famously Cher, while also creating memorable looks for Carol Burnett, Diana Ross, Tina Turner, Barbra Streisand, Elton John, Madonna, Liza Minnelli, Pink and many others.
His team announced his death on social media, saying Mackie had spent his 87 years fulfilling the dream he had always wanted: becoming a fashion and costume designer. They added that his designs would continue bringing beauty to the world.
The designer who made Cher impossible to ignore
Mackie’s partnership with Cher became one of the most important celebrity-designer collaborations in modern entertainment.
The two worked together across television, concerts, awards shows and decades of changing fashion. Mackie helped create the daring, body-revealing and heavily embellished aesthetic that became inseparable from Cher’s public image.
One of the most famous examples came at the 1974 Met Gala, where Cher appeared in a sheer, beaded Mackie gown finished with white feathers. Years later, Mackie created her dramatic black beaded ensemble and enormous feathered Mohawk-style headdress for the 1986 Academy Awards.
Cher would wear Mackie again when she won the Academy Award for best actress for Moonstruck in 1988.
Their relationship ultimately stretched across decades and into Broadway. Mackie won the 2019 Tony Award for Best Costume Design of a Musical for The Cher Show.
After his death, Cher paid tribute to her longtime collaborator and friend, writing that she imagined him arriving in heaven with his sequins, beads and sketch pad.
His connection to Marilyn Monroe came before Cher
One of Mackie’s earliest links to fashion history arrived before he became a household name.
While working for celebrated designer Jean Louis, the young Mackie created the original sketch for the now-famous sheer, crystal-covered gown Marilyn Monroe wore while singing “Happy Birthday” to President John F. Kennedy in 1962.
The dress would become one of the most recognizable garments of the 20th century.
Decades later, Mackie publicly criticized the decision to allow Kim Kardashian to wear the original Monroe gown to the 2022 Met Gala, arguing that the garment had been created specifically for Monroe and should have been preserved as an important piece of history.
Carol Burnett gave Mackie another kind of immortality
Mackie was not simply a designer of glamorous gowns. He was also a master of visual comedy.
During his years on The Carol Burnett Show, he created costumes that could deliver a joke before an actor said a word.
The most famous was Burnett’s outrageous “curtain dress” for the show’s parody of Gone with the Wind. The green creation came complete with a curtain rod still running across the shoulders — an image that became one of American television comedy’s most enduring visual gags.
The costume is now held by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History.
Nine Emmys, three Oscar nominations and a Tony
Mackie’s career was backed by more than celebrity attention.
He won nine Emmy Awards, earned three Academy Award nominations for costume design and received his Tony for The Cher Show. He was inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame in 2002.
His Oscar nominations included work on Lady Sings the Blues, Funny Lady and Pennies From Heaven.
His reach extended beyond television, film and theater. Mackie launched ready-to-wear fashion, worked with QVC and designed collectible Barbie dolls, bringing his maximalist aesthetic to consumers far beyond Hollywood.
Why Bob Mackie’s influence didn’t end with the 1970s
Perhaps the strongest evidence of Mackie’s impact is that younger stars kept rediscovering his work.
His archival designs have appeared on Zendaya, Miley Cyrus and Anya Taylor-Joy, while the visual vocabulary he popularized — crystal embellishment, sheer illusion fabrics, feathers, theatrical silhouettes and unapologetic glamour — continues to dominate concerts and red carpets.
Zendaya wore a vintage Mackie design while honoring Cher at the 2024 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony. Miley Cyrus has also worn his work, while Taylor Swift turned to Mackie’s original showgirl costumes for imagery associated with her 2025 album The Life of a Showgirl.
That generational reach helps explain why Mackie’s death is more than the loss of a celebrity designer.
He helped establish the idea that a performer’s clothes could be part of the performance itself — not merely decoration, but character, spectacle and storytelling.
In Mackie’s world, glamour was never supposed to whisper.
It was supposed to walk into the room covered in beads, feathers and rhinestones — and make sure nobody looked anywhere else.
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