Bob Mackie, costume designer to Cher and Burnett, dies at 87

Bob Mackie died of pneumonia at 10.40 a.m. on 14 September in Palm Springs, California. He was 87. A representative confirmed the cause and the place to People the same afternoon. His Instagram account had already posted the fact of his death: he had lived the years doing the only work he said he ever wanted, fashion and costume design.

Mackie was born Robert Gordon Mackie in Monterey Park, California, on 24 March 1939. After a year of art school he sketched for Frank Thompson in the Paramount costume department, then for Jean Louis. The work that made his name sat on television, not a couture runway. He designed for The Carol Burnett Show, then for Cher's variety series, and kept dressing both women for the rest of their public lives. Burnett wrote on Monday that sadness did not come close. Cher wrote that he had gone up to heaven with sequins, beads and a sketch pad.

The 1974 Met Gala dress he made for Cher, a sheer illusion column with white feathers on the arms and legs, is the image most archives reach for. It was not a one-off. Mackie built a method: nude illusion net, stones, fringe, and a silhouette that photographed as if the wearer had been drawn rather than sewn. The trade nicknames followed the method. Sultan of Sequins. Rajah of Rhinestones. Guru of Glitter. He dressed Tina Turner, Dolly Parton, Diana Ross, Elton John, Judy Garland, Liza Minnelli and Barbra Streisand. Sabrina Carpenter wore a Mackie design at the MTV Video Music Awards in 2025. Miley Cyrus wore one at the 2024 Grammys, the night she took the award for Flowers.

The prize list is a ledger of how American television and Broadway paid for spectacle. Nine Primetime Emmys. A Tony in 2019 for The Cher Show. Three Oscar nominations, for Funny Lady in 1976 and Pennies From Heaven in 1982 among them. Induction into the Television Academy Hall of Fame in 2002. A CFDA lifetime award in 2019. The prizes describe volume as much as taste. Variety hours needed a new look every week. Mackie supplied it.

He was still in the room late. A photograph from 15 January 2026 places him at a Palm Royale Emmy FYC event in North Hollywood. The career that started on a sketch pad at Paramount had not closed. Cause of death was pneumonia, not a long public illness. There was no prior announcement of decline.

Survivors include a granddaughter and great-granddaughters. His son Robin died in 1993. His partner of decades, the costume designer Ray Aghayan, died in 2011. A short marriage to Lulu Porter ended in 1963.

What remains in public is the work on bodies that were already famous. The Burnett curtain-rod sketch. The Cher Oscar headdress of 1986. The Elton John stage suits. Those garments are now objects in museum shows and auction catalogues. The method is copyable. The particular mix of television timing and red-carpet nerve is not.

The television work is easy to undervalue because it was weekly. A variety hour in the 1970s burned costumes. Mackie treated that burn rate as the brief. He sketched fast, built in illusion net so a body could move under lights, and loaded the surface with stones that read on camera at twenty feet. The same skills transferred to a Broadway bio-musical and to awards-show dressing. That transfer is why the Tony and the Emmys sit on the same shelf.

Palm Springs is where a large share of the mid-century entertainment colony went to age. Mackie died there on a Monday morning. The statement on his account did not name a funeral. It named the job.