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Bob Mackie, the exuberant costume and fashion designer whose glittering, beaded, sequined, rhinestoned, feathered and often winged creations bedecked, bedazzled and elevated performers like Carol Burnett, Diana Ross, Tina Turner, Bernadette Peters, Bette Midler, Mitzi Gaynor, Liza Minnelli, Elton John, RuPaul and, most memorably and enduringly, Cher — as well as an 11½-inch model named Barbie — died on Monday in Palm Springs, Calif. He was 87.
The death, at a hospital, was confirmed by Joe McFate, Mr. Mackie’s longtime design director.
“He dressed every spangly woman in show business,” Frank DeCaro, the author of “Unmistakably Mackie: The Fashion and Fantasy of Bob Mackie” (1999), said in an interview. “You can mention some of the greatest names in fashion, and the average person won’t be able to conjure up, for example, a Giorgio Armani suit. But if you say to an American of a certain age, ‘What is a Bob Mackie?,’ they know exactly what you’re talking about.”
Mr. Mackie got his start in Hollywood, dropping out of college to sketch for the costume designers Jean Louis and Edith Head, but it was television that made his name. When Carol Burnett put together her variety show in 1967, she picked Mr. Mackie to design the costumes. At the time, he was in his late 20s — though he looked about 12, Ms. Burnett often said. Over the show’s 11 seasons, he created an average of 60 costumes a week for Ms. Burnett, Harvey Korman, Vicki Lawrence, Tim Conway and Lyle Waggoner, as well as the show’s guest stars and supporting performers.
The skits, of course, were comedic gold, and Ms. Burnett said that she frequently found her characters through Mr. Mackie’s designs. For Mrs. Wiggins — the dim and indifferent secretary whom “the I.Q. fairy never visited,” in Ms. Burnett’s words — he assembled a frosty blonde wig, a push-up bra and a tight black skirt that wasn’t quite tight enough for Ms. Burnett’s lanky frame. “Stick your behind back into it,” he instructed her, and the character’s mincing walk was born.
The show was known for its zany movie parodies, and when it took on a scene from “Gone With the Wind” (renamed “Went With the Wind”) in which the heroine, fallen on hard times, has a dress made out of her curtains, Mr. Mackie asked the prop department for a curtain rod so he could fashion his own version for Ms. Burnett as “Starlet O’Hara.” (It was such an instant, irresistible sight gag that Ms. Burnett made sure to warn Mr. Korman, playing “Ratt Butler,” beforehand so he wouldn’t lose his composure onstage.)
“That gown is gorgeous,” Ratt exclaimed in the skit.
“Thank you,” Starlet replied. “I saw it in the window and I just couldn’t resist it.”
