Bob Mackie dies in Palm Springs at 87

Bob Mackie died on Monday in Palm Springs, California. He was 87. Joe McFate, his longtime design director, confirmed the death at a hospital. A statement on Mackie's Instagram said he had lived the life he wanted: fashion and costume design, and nothing else.

The cause was not released. The public notice arrived first through that studio account, then through obituaries in New York, Los Angeles and London that treated him as a working designer rather than a retired name.

Robert Gordon Mackie was born in Monterey Park, east of downtown Los Angeles, on 24 March 1939. Some reference files list 1940. He studied at Chouinard Art Institute and started as a sketch artist in 1961. Mitzi Gaynor hired him in 1966 to rebuild her stage wardrobe. From that point he stayed inside television and touring rather than ready-to-wear.

He designed Carol Burnett's clothes for all 11 seasons of her CBS variety show and won the first Emmy given for costume design. He collected nine Emmys from 30 nominations and entered the Television Academy Hall of Fame. Film work brought three Academy Award nominations, including Funny Lady in 1975, where he and Ray Aghayan, his professional and life partner, built about 40 complete 1930s outfits for Barbra Streisand's Fanny Brice: dresses, suits, hats, gloves, scarves and shoes.

Cher was the partnership that made him visible to people who never watched variety television. He dressed her for The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour, for concert tours and for the 1986 Academy Awards, where she wore a black beaded gown and a tall feathered headdress that still circulates as a still photograph. He later won a Tony, a Drama Desk Award and an Outer Critics Circle Award for The Cher Show on Broadway in 2019. The Council of Fashion Designers of America gave him a lifetime achievement award the same year. The Museum at FIT staged a retrospective in 1999.

The nicknames followed the work: Sultan of Sequins, Rajah of Rhinestones, Guru of Glitter. He accepted them. "A woman who wears my clothes is not afraid to be noticed," he said. Offstage he dressed like a Ralph Lauren catalogue, button-down shirts and khaki trousers, which Frank DeCaro, author of Unmistakably Mackie (1999), liked to point out as a joke against the clothes.

The client list ran through Diana Ross, Tina Turner, Dolly Parton, Bette Midler, Liza Minnelli, Elton John, Bernadette Peters, RuPaul and Barbie. In the past few years younger performers went back into the archive. Zendaya wore Mackie. Taylor Swift used archival pieces in promotional art for The Life of a Showgirl. That late demand mattered for a designer whose peak television years ended decades earlier.

Mackie married Lulu Porter in 1959. They divorced in 1963. He and Aghayan remained partners until Aghayan's death. Their son Robin Mackie is listed in public records. The studio that still carries Mackie's name will now have to decide what to do with unfinished commissions and with the stock of beads, feathers and patterns that defined a particular American idea of glamour: television light, touring stages, and clothes built to read from the back of a hall.

Monday's obituaries listed the awards in a block. The more useful fact is narrower. For half a century American variety television and a small group of touring singers used one designer's language of sequins, wings and exposed construction. That language is now an archive. The people who still want it will have to pull from existing garments.