Bob Mackie: The Costume Designer Who Dressed Cher and Carol Burnett
Bob Mackie died on 14 September 2026, aged 87. At 23 he drew the sketch for the most famous dress of the twentieth century, the one Marilyn Monroe wore to sing "Happy Birthday" to President Kennedy in 1962, and the credit went to his boss. He spent the eleven years that followed making somewhere between fifty and seventy costumes a week for The Carol Burnett Show, and the decades after that dressing Cher, Diana Ross, Elton John, Tina Turner and the showgirls of Las Vegas.
This episode covers the year of art school he abandoned for a job, the curtain dress now in the Smithsonian, the 1974…
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