‘Designer to the Stars’ Bob Mackie, Who Studied at Pasadena City College, Dies at 87

Bob Mackie, the costume designer whose sequined and feathered creations dressed Cher, Carol Burnett and Diana Ross across six decades of American television, died Monday at a hospital in Palm Springs. He was 87.

Mackie’s route to Hollywood ran through Pasadena. After high school he enrolled at Pasadena City College to study advertising and illustration, then went on to study costume design at the Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles. He left both schools without a degree and was sketching costumes at Paramount Studios by the early 1960s.

His longtime publicist, Jenelle Hamilton, said Mackie died of pneumonia Monday morning. His death was announced in a statement posted to his Instagram account. “He lived his 87 years to the fullest,” the statement said.

PCC holds Mackie among its distinguished alumni, featuring him in its 75th-anniversary institutional history..

Mackie was born Robert Gordon Mackie in Monterey Park on March 24, 1939. He was raised by his maternal grandparents in Alhambra and later moved to Rosemead to live with his father, attending Rosemead High School.

Accounts of his childhood describe a boy who sketched costumes for his mother and sister and worked on the costumes and sets of his high school plays.

He left Chouinard after about a year for a job sketching for costume designer Frank Thompson at Paramount.

In 1962 he drew the original sketch for the beaded gown Marilyn Monroe wore to sing “Happy Birthday” to President John F. Kennedy.

He was later hired by designer Ray Aghayan — who became his life and creative partner until Aghayan’s death in 2011 — to work on “The Judy Garland Show.” The two won the first Emmy Award ever given for costume design.

Mackie dressed Carol Burnett for all 11 seasons of “The Carol Burnett Show,” including the curtain-rod dress she wore as Starlet O’Hara in the sketch “Went with the Wind,” which Burnett and Mackie later donated to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. He won nine Emmy Awards, a Tony Award for “The Cher Show” and earned three Academy Award nominations, for “Lady Sings the Blues,” “Funny Lady” and “Pennies From Heaven.” He was inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame in 2002.

“A woman who wears my clothes is not afraid to be noticed,” he once said.

Burnett, in a tribute posted Monday, wrote that “Bob did it all. There was no one like him.” Cher, whose stage and red-carpet wardrobe Mackie shaped for decades, posted a farewell saying he had gone to heaven carrying his sequins, beads and sketch pad.

Mackie described his method in an interview with “CBS Mornings” in October 2025, saying he sketched his designs but watched performers work before dressing them. “You can’t just put a dress on anybody,” he said.

He was still working in his final year. In that same interview, Mackie said he had been surprised to see Taylor Swift wearing a costume he designed more than 40 years earlier for a Las Vegas show, which she used in photographs for her album “The Life of a Showgirl.”