The shimmering, glittering, feathered and bedazzled costumes of Bob Mackie, the singular showbiz couturier who died on Monday at 87, earned him names like the Sultan of Sequins and the Rajah of Rhinestones.
His position in the fashion canon became defined by stardust and fantasy. Yet the man himself possessed a public persona that bore little resemblance to his loud and dazzling designs.
Throughout his six-decade career, Mackie was known as a modest, soft-spoken and devoted craftsman who wasn’t prone to braggadocio regarding his indelible fashion contributions to pop culture. Dressed dependably in uniforms of button-down striped shirts, khaki pants and bow ties, Mackie maintained his boyish, neatly combed hair into his 80s. In paparazzi photographs of him standing beside his divas, he could almost look like a glitch in the picture.
The story of Mackie’s bugle-beaded ascent to fame, at least in the annals of showbiz fashion history, had all the stardust of a Hollywood movie.
After studying at the Chouinard Art Institute as a young man, he headed to Hollywood to work for the costume designers Jean Louis — for whom he drew the sketch of the dress Marilyn Monroe wore during her birthday lullaby to President John F. Kennedy — and Edith Head. It was in the 1970s, after working on “The Judy Garland Show” and “The Carol Burnett Show,” that he began designing his stage-persona-defining costumes for performers like Diana Ross, Bette Midler, Ann-Margret and Elton John.
As incomparable as Mackie’s résumé as a showbiz courtier was, one element of traditional fashion world success always eluded him: acceptance from the frosty corridors of high fashion on Seventh Avenue. It was in the 1980s that he moved to Manhattan to try joining the ranks of master courtiers like Bill Blass and Oscar de la Renta, and he would also introduce a ready-to-wear line, Bob Mackie Originals. But the line folded in ignominy in 1993 and his tenure on Seventh Avenue became the biographical equivalent of a cracked rhinestone on an otherwise shimmering dress.
But on a visit to New York last year at the age of 86, on the occasion of a downtown gallery show featuring his fashion sketches, Mackie looked back on that tender chapter of his life with a reporter from The New York Times. He said he had no regrets.
“Maybe what I do wasn’t for everybody, but that’s fine,” Mackie said. “I could only ever be true to myself. Anyway, no one is supposed to make fashion for everybody, unless you’re designing for Target.”
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