“We’re all born naked, and the rest is Bob Mackie,” RuPaul once said of Bob Mackie, one of the most iconic costume and fashion designers of the last 60 years.
Mackie, who died on September 14 at 87, created some of the most recognizable and timeless pieces in fashion history, dressing stars including Cher, Dolly Parton, Tina Turner, and Britney Spears.
He also managed to stay relevant in seven different decades, from drawing the first sketch for Marilyn Monroe’s iconic “Happy Birthday Mr. President” dress to providing one of the cornerstones for the aesthetic of Taylor Swift’s latest album, “The Life of a Showgirl.”
To commemorate his immeasurable impact on fashion over the years, we’ve compiled a list of just some of Mackie’s iconic and best-known looks, from the ’60s to now.
To talk about Bob Mackie is to talk about Cher. She wore this creation to the 1986 Academy Awards.
Some would describe this as Cher’s “revenge dress,” since she was snubbed by the Academy for her role in “Mask.”
Mackie told The New Yorker in 2018, “There were a lot of people who said, ‘That’s not fashion!’ And I said, ‘Of course it’s not fashion. It’s a crazy getup for attention.’ And it did get attention — people talk about it still.”
Two years later, she won an Academy Award of her own in a Mackie design.
Cher was slightly more covered up when she won best actress for her performance in “Moonstruck.”
“She wanted to wear one of those sheer dresses that covered just what you needed to cover, and the rest was up for grabs,” Mackie told The New Yorker. “Of course, getting all dressed up and winning — you can’t beat that. She just wanted to look like Cher.”
Another of Cher’s iconic Oscars looks was this yellow two-piece set in 1973.
Mackie and Cher met in the ’60s when she appeared on “The Carol Burnett Show” and immediately connected. She wore this bejeweled two-piece to the 1973 Oscars, baring her abs, setting the tone for their decades of work together.
“It wasn’t until a little later, when we started showing a little midriff, that people started getting excited,” Mackie told The New Yorker. “It never occurred to her to wear anything ordinary.”
Wearing one of his designs, Cher attended the Met Gala in 1974 with Mackie.
“I’ve never seen so many photographers just come out of the shadows at the Met and take her picture. And, of course, she was in every newspaper the next day, and they’ve been printing it in the last 50 years, over and over again,” Mackie said of this look in 2025, per People.
“People were horrified, they thought, that’s not fashion, she’s just naked at the Metropolitan,” he added. “But it was just amazing.”
She rewore the dress to appear on the cover of Time in 1975.
One of the most iconic looks from “The Carol Burnett Show,” the curtain dress worn in 1976, was designed by Mackie.
If you’ve seen “Gone with the Wind,” you know what Burnett was spoofing, but if you haven’t: Famously, Scarlett O’Hara fashions a dress out of her home’s velvet green drapes to appear wealthy.
Burnett, ever the jokester, worked with Mackie to create her own curtain dress, this one complete with a curtain rod across her shoulders.
An editor on the show, Tucker Wiard, told the Television Academy Foundation in 2011 that the laughter from the studio audience went on for so long upon seeing the dress that it had to be cut down for broadcast, and it ended up being the longest in-studio reaction in the show’s 11 seasons.
“Over the course of eleven years, Bob created over 17,000 works of art for ‘The Carol Burnett Show’ — a prolific genius,” Burnett told the Paley Center. “Bob means the world to me.”
Mackie also worked a lot with Tina Turner for her stage costumes.
“She was born to be on stage. She just couldn’t help herself,” Mackie told People in 2025, after Turner’s death in 2023.
The two met after Turner split from her husband, Ike Turner, and she was looking to reinvent herself. “She would buy cheap evening gowns in Paris in these little shops,” he said. “And we would redo these funny inexpensive evening dresses into Tina Turner outfits.”
So much so that Beyoncé wore a Mackie piece to pay tribute to Turner in 2005.
The flame dress, as it was called, was first worn by Turner in 1978. Twenty-seven years later, Beyoncé wore the dress at the 2005 Kennedy Center Honors and performed “Proud Mary.“
Besides Cher, the other person most associated with Mackie’s early career is Mitzi Gaynor, who wore this transparent dress for her NBC special in 1969.
Gaynor, an iconic actor, singer, and dancer from Hollywood’s Golden Age, was one of the first celebrities to work with Mackie, starting in 1966.
“Bob created me. He saw facets of me that I didn’t even know existed and brought them to life in our work together. He could make me look more glamorous than I’ve ever felt or looked at one moment and then make me a clown or a fabulous gypsy with a rubber chicken in the next. He’s a genius,” Gaynor said of her friendship with the designer.
According to Gaynor, this was the “first nude dress that Bob Mackie ever did.” It sold at auction in 2019.
The bedazzled Los Angeles Dodgers uniform, perhaps Elton John’s most iconic look, was designed by Mackie.
The custom piece was encrusted in Swarovski crystals and has lived on in the decades since John first wore it. Harry Styles wore his own version in 2018 for Halloween, and John himself wore an updated robe version at his farewell tour in 2022.
“I did not expect this — I was creating lots of different things for him at the time, and it was just another quick gag,” Mackie told Vogue in 2022. “But I am delighted it has become so very famous, and an important moment in Elton’s career.”
Madonna channeled Marilyn Monroe in this Mackie design at the 1991 Academy Awards.
Madonna wore the dress to perform at the ceremony — she sang “Sooner or Later (I Always Get My Man)” written by Stephen Sondheim — and later rewore it in her 1992 book, “Sex.”
In September 2024, the dress was spotted again, this time on the red carpet at the MTV Video Music Awards, worn by Sabrina Carpenter. Carpenter has since worn multiple vintage Mackie looks.
If you think it looks like Marilyn Monroe’s iconic “Happy birthday, Mr. President” dress, you’d be right. Mackie was the one who first sketched the dress at the behest of designer Jean Louis, per ET.
RuPaul stretched her wings at the 1995 VH1 Fashion & Music Awards in a Mackie creation.
RuPaul and Mackie had a long-standing friendship and working relationship; Mackie was even the first guest judge on “RuPaul’s Drag Race” back in 2009.
“We’re all born naked, and the rest is Bob Mackie,” the drag star told the Paley Center in 2024. “No one has brought more glamour, beauty, and excitement to the stage and screen.”
Britney Spears closed out her iconic 2001 Dream Within a Dream tour wearing a crystalline bra designed by Mackie.
This look was originally designed in 1981, but it didn’t become truly iconic until 20 years later, when Spears wore it during the encore of her Dream Within a Dream tour, immortalized in an HBO special.
“When someone knew just how to style me, I was always grateful,” Spears wrote of this tour in her memoir, “The Woman in Me.” “They are shrewd about how they presented me as a star, and I know that I owe them. They captured me as an artist. The minds behind that tour were brilliant. It was by far my best tour.”
In 2025, the bra set sold at auction for $78,000, per People.
A new generation of women has pulled from Mackie’s archives, like Zendaya, for the 2024 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction.
To honor Cher, a 2024 inductee, Zendaya and her stylist, Law Roach, pulled this daring dress from Mackie’s archives. This look is from Mackie’s 2001 collection, Elle reported.
Following news of Mackie’s death, Roach posted on Instagram to honor him, calling Mackie his “fashion father and one of the greatest designers in the history of American fashion.”
For her showstopping performance at the 2024 Grammys, Miley Cyrus channeled Turner in a silver Mackie design.
This dress, part of Mackie’s 2002 collection, was loaned to her for the Grammys performance, during which she joyfully shouted out that she’d just won her first Grammy.
To commemorate the occasion, she purchased the dress when it went on auction that December. “This dress represents more than a performance — it’s a celebration of the relationship between music, artistry, and glamour,” Cyrus said. “This performance was a pivotal moment in my life, and to have Bob Mackie’s support in securing it means the world to me.”
“As the designer of this dress, I couldn’t imagine it on anyone else. That girl was born to perform,” Mackie said.
One of the looks Taylor Swift wore during her “The Life of a Showgirl” era was designed by Mackie.
Swift’s most recent album, “The Life of a Showgirl,” perhaps had her most defined aesthetic ever, as seen in the multiple album cover variations, the lyric videos, and the music video for lead single “The Fate of Ophelia.”
Given the album’s showgirl-inspired aesthetic, Swift had to wear a Mackie design. This was another look designed for the Vegas show “Jubilee” (just like the sequined bra worn by Spears).
“They all want to look like that showgirl,” Mackie told The New York Times in 2025 of the new generation of young stars flocking to his looks.
“I always think of her as a little fairy-tale princess,” Mackie said of Swift. “That young, young girl. But she’s a grown-up now.”
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