BobMackie

Forgotten Queers: Bob Mackie — Sequins, Camp, Cher, and a Curtain Rod This week on Forgotten Queers, Gary is joined once again by guest cohost Sion to celebrate the life, career, and absolutely fabulous legacy of Bob Mackie—the legendary costume designer who understood that sometimes more really is more. Mackie, who died September 14, 2026, at the age of 87, spent more than six decades transforming fabric, feathers, beads, sequins, rhinestones, and occasionally an entire set of curtains into unforgettable pieces of entertainment history. Born Robert Gordon Mackie in Southern California, Mackie entered Hollywood in the early 1960s as a sketch artist. He worked around some of the great names in costume design, including Edith Head and Jean Louis, and quickly demonstrated that he had an extraordinary eye not simply for fashion, but for performers. That distinction would define his career. Bob Mackie wasn’t interested only in making someone look beautiful. He wanted the clothes to help tell the story. Television proved to be the perfect playground. During the golden age of the television variety show, performers needed an astonishing number of costumes. There were musical numbers, comedy sketches, guest stars, dancers and elaborate production numbers—sometimes all within the same hour. Mackie thrived in that world. His work with Mitzi Gaynor helped establish him as a designer in his own right, and in 1967 he became the costume designer for a new television variety series starring Carol Burnett. He stayed for all eleven seasons of The Carol Burnett Show. Mackie’s contribution to the series went far beyond dressing Carol beautifully. His costumes helped create characters. Mrs. Wiggins, Eunice, Nora Desmond and countless others became funnier because Mackie understood exactly what Carol Burnett needed the moment she walked onto the stage. And then there was the curtain dress. For the show’s legendary 1976 parody Went with the Wind!, Burnett played Starlett O’Hara in a send-up of Gone with the Wind. The script called for Starlett to fashion a dress from the curtains. Mackie decided simply wrapping Carol in drapery wasn’t funny enough. So he left the curtain rod in. Burnett descended the staircase wearing an enormous green velvet creation—with the rod extending across her shoulders—and television history was made. The costume became one of the most recognizable comedy costumes ever created and eventually entered the collection of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. It demonstrated something essential about Bob Mackie: underneath all those rhinestones was a wicked sense of humor. Then came Cher. Mackie’s collaboration with Cher would become one of the great performer-designer partnerships in entertainment history. On The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour and later Cher, Mackie helped create a visual identity that was unlike anything else on television. Cher’s long dark hair, impossibly glamorous gowns, feathers, beads and strategically placed sheer fabric challenged conventional ideas about what a woman could wear on American television. Their partnership continued long after the variety-show era ended. One particularly memorable moment came at the 1986 Academy Awards. Cher had received acclaim for her performance in Mask but had not been nominated for Best Actress. When she arrived to present an award, she did so wearing one of Mackie’s most outrageous creations: a black ensemble with an enormous feathered headdress, exposed midriff and plenty of sparkle. Whether it was intended as revenge, rebellion, humor—or some combination of all three—the message was impossible to miss: You didn’t nominate Cher? Fine. You’re still going to look at her. Two years later, Cher returned to the Oscars in another Mackie creation, this time to collect the Academy Award for Best Actress for Moonstruck. Mackie’s influence, however, stretched far beyond Cher and Carol Burnett. He designed for an extraordinary collection of performers including Diana Ross, Judy Garland, Liza Minnelli, Tina Turner, Bette Midler, Ann-Margret, Barbra Streisand, Elton John, Madonna, Bernadette Peters and many more. And if you grew up during the age of television variety shows, chances are you saw Bob Mackie’s work even when you didn’t know his name. His career eventually expanded into ready-to-wear fashion, collectible Barbie dolls, QVC’s enormously successful wearable-art collections, stage productions and more. The industry recognized him as well. Mackie earned nine Emmy Awards from 32 nominations, received three Academy Award nominations for costume design, was inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame, and received the 2019 Tony Award for Best Costume Design of a Musical for The Cher Show. That Tony was especially fitting. Decades after Mackie helped invent Cher’s visual image, Broadway was celebrating both Cher’s life and the clothes that helped tell her story. But Bob Mackie’s legacy is about something larger than awards. He understood something about entertainment that can sometimes get lost when we talk about fashion seriously: Clothes can be fun. They can make us laugh. They can make an entrance. They can transform a performer into someone—or something—completely different. They can also give people permission to be bigger, louder, stranger, sexier and more fabulous than they thought they were allowed to be. That’s one reason Mackie’s work has had such a lasting connection to queer culture. His designs embraced theatricality, exaggeration, glamour, camp and transformation without apology. He didn’t ask his performers to disappear into their clothes. His clothes helped them become more of themselves. And generations of drag performers and queer artists understood exactly what that meant. Bob Mackie once imagined a world filled with sequins, feathers, laughter and spectacle—and then spent more than sixty years creating it. So join Gary and Sion for this special episode of Forgotten Queers as they remember Bob Mackie: the man who dressed some of the biggest stars in entertainment, helped define the look of the television variety-show era, turned Cher into a fashion icon, gave Carol Burnett one of the greatest sight gags in television history—and proved that when you’re wondering whether an outfit needs a few more sequins, the answer is probably yes. Because sometimes subtlety is overrated. Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/forgotten-queers--6719466/support. Please follow me on Facebook, BlueSky,TikToc,Twitter at Gary Thoren. We must never forget our Forgotten Queers