The way Bob Mackie later described it, his most memorable outfit had happened because the client was “pissed off.”
The year was 1986, the Oscars were coming up, and Cher had been snubbed for her role in the movie “Mask.”
She had not received the nomination for Best Actress, despite critical acclaim around her performance. Instead, she had been asked to present the award for Best Supporting Actor, which felt like the icing on top of a pungent cake.
“They said I wasn’t going to win an Oscar because my boyfriends were too young and I dressed too strange,” Cher said Monday, speaking by phone from her home in Malibu. “I didn’t dress appropriate for an actress, for a serious actress, actually. So I woke up one morning and I had this idea, and I called Bob.”
There would be a bedazzling, black matching top and skirt, with her midriff exposed, and a headdress so tall that camera operators would struggle to fit it into the frame as she ascended the stairs at the Kodak Theater that February.
The point was to send a message to the Academy: She was going to keep being herself.
Mackie, who died on Monday at 87, was the ideal partner in helping to achieve that.
Over the years, he had become known for wildly theatrical get-ups for top-drawer divas, blending humor, outrageousness and a high dose of sex appeal.
On the occasions when he staged runway shows, fashion editors frequently skipped out. But Liza Minnelli, Diana Ross, RuPaul, Elton John and Madonna all donned his glittering gowns, feathered capes, and beaded headpieces.
“They were meant to be seen — and seen in a large way,” Cher said of his clothes. “They didn’t live well in captivity.”
The design for the 1986 Oscars was a rare occasion when Mackie expressed some hesitation about one of her ideas.
Mackie, in a 2008 interview with me, recalled telling Cher: “You can’t wear this to the Academy Awards. You’re giving an award — you’re going to upstage whoever you give it to.’” But Cher, he said, insisted: “She said, “Oh, they won’t mind, it’ll be OK.’”
Whatever the reaction of the winner (Don Ameche, for “Cocoon”) may have been, “by the time I got there, I had lost all my upsetness about the Academy telling me I was never going to be a serious actress,” Cher said.
Mackie and his erstwhile partner-in-kitsch first met in 1967, when she was guest starring on “The Carol Burnett Show.” Mackie was designing the costumes for Burnett and her guests, after working in the costume department at Paramount Pictures and as an assistant designer on “The Judy Garland Show.”
“I see the door open, and I turn around, and this handsome guy, young guy, suntan, hair bleached and curly, and I looked and I said, ‘My God, you’re much younger than I thought you’d be,’” she said. “And he said, ‘And you’re much thinner than I thought you’d be.’”
When Cher and Sonny got their own show in 1971, Mackie came with them.
“We would do like 13 or 14 costumes in a week,” Cher said. “All I really know was in the beginning, CBS, you know, screaming and yelling about the cost. But then they started getting research in that said a lot of the women were tuning in just to see the clothes, my dresses. Bob and I laughed so much. I was like, ‘OK, we got the last laugh.’”
After that, the budgets ballooned, and beads and sparkles arrived by the truckload. Tina Turner appeared on the show and became his second most consistent client.
It was 1977, just a year after Turner had left her abuse-filled marriage to Ike Turner. She had been left with nothing but a white, bloodstained Yves Saint Laurent pantsuit, two Jaguars and her last name. With virtually no money, Turner scrounged around flea markets for vintage cocktail dresses, which she brought back to Mackie to refine for her stage performances.
At first, Mackie didn’t know what sort of help was needed. But it became clear soon enough: His job was to cut.
The instruction “More” from Turner meant: less fabric.
During Turner’s disco days, as she performed her cover of the Trammps’ “Disco Inferno” at cheesy casinos, Mackie designed a shimmering silver gown with pleated, dragon-like wings.
Another Mackie confection for Turner was a zebra-print dress with a tail on the back.
Initially, the idea of adding the tail had made Turner “a little nervous,” he said. (And indeed, it is hard to imagine anyone approving of that sort of thing now). But the tail, and the way it swung from side to side as she swayed her hips, was “great,” he said.
When Turner pivoted back to rock ’n’ roll in the early 1980s, Mackie was ready with black leather. (Skin tight, naturally.)
And when Cher went on to become one of the busiest touring artists of all time, doing nearly a thousand performances over the course of six major tours around the United States and the globe (along with numerous Las Vegas residencies), Mackie was a constant presence.
“I have no idea how many dresses we’ve done, because he did all of my tours,” she said. He was more than a member of her entourage: “We were friends.”
In recent days, when Mackie was dying, Cher was with him in Palm Springs, along with Joe McFate, Mackie’s design director.
“I was just with him, and I’m happy for him. Do you know what I mean?” Cher said. “He was struggling. And Joe said it was, like, the best time he’s had in a long time, and I’m so glad I went.”
She said there had been a lot of joy. “We were laughing, talking about everything. I’m sorry that he was sick,” she said, “but I know that he’s someplace better — designing dresses.”
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