In Memoriam: Fashion Designer and Longtime Otis College Mentor Bob Mackie Has Died

“There are generations of Otis designers who carry something Bob taught them into their own work today. That is an extraordinary legacy.”

Renowned fashion designer Bob Mackie, who mentored Fashion Design students for over two decades—hiring many as assistants—died this week. Mackie was most known for his work as the costume designer for Carol Burnett’s long-running eponymous variety TV show—work for which is held in the Smithsonian Museum—as well as Cher’s multiple variety shows, music videos, and red carpet appearances. He also famously dressed Diana Ross, Tina Turner, Elton John, Liza Minelli, and Bette Midler, among others. 

Mackie dressed several special-edition Barbie dolls, including a “Goddess of the Sun” Barbie that had 11,000 hand-sewn sequins on her gown. While working for costume designer Jean Louis in the 1960s, Mackie sketched the infamous nude gown that Marilyn Monroe wore when she sang “Happy Birthday” to President John F. Kennedy. His work earned him nine Emmy Awards, three Academy Award nominations, and an induction into the Television Academy Hall of Fame. In 2011, Otis College honored him with its Design Legend Award and an honorary doctorate degree.

Of Mackie’s influence and impact on Otis College, Fashion Design Chair Jill Zeleznik shared:

“Bob Mackie was much more than an extraordinary designer to the Otis Fashion Design community—he was a beloved mentor, teacher, and true master of his craft. We were incredibly fortunate to have Bob mentor our students for so many years, sharing not only his remarkable talent, but also his time, knowledge, generosity, and genuine enthusiasm for developing the next generation of designers.

What made Bob so exceptional as a mentor was that he could teach the entire thought process of design. He could pick up a pencil and beautifully illustrate exactly what he was thinking. He understood proportion, silhouette, movement, color, construction, and fit at the highest level, and he challenged our students to understand why a design worked—not simply how to make it. Through fittings and critiques, he taught them how to refine a shape, solve a construction problem, and keep pushing until a garment became something truly beautiful.

Bob believed deeply in the principles of design and in the importance of knowing your craft. His projects challenged our students to dream, but he also expected them to develop the technical skills necessary to bring those dreams to life. That combination was incredibly powerful. He taught our students to look more carefully, think more deeply, and never settle too quickly.

For me, one of Bob’s greatest gifts was his willingness to share what he knew. After such an extraordinary career, he could have simply been celebrated for his own body of work. Instead, he continued to give back. He opened his creative process to our students and treated mentorship as something meaningful. That generosity had an enormous impact on our students, our faculty, and the Fashion Design program as a whole.

There are generations of Otis designers who carry something Bob taught them into their own work today. That is an extraordinary legacy.

We have lost a brilliant designer and a master of fashion, but we have also lost a very special member of the Otis Fashion Design family. I will always be grateful for the years Bob spent with us, for the beautiful projects we created together, and for everything he taught all of us. His influence will continue to live through the designers he mentored and the lessons he so generously shared.”

Mackie was a local talent, having been born and raised in the San Gabriel Valley. More on his background can be read in this excerpt from The New York Times’s obituary:

“Robert Gordon Mackie was born in Monterey Park, Calif., a bit east of downtown Los Angeles, on March 24, 1939. That was the year, he liked to say, that ‘Gone With the Wind,’ ‘The Women’ and ‘The Wizard of Oz’ came out.

His father, Charles Robert Mackie, who worked at Bank of America, and his mother, Mildred Agnes (Smith) Mackie, a homemaker, divorced when he was young, and he was raised by his paternal grandmother, Bessie Ida Mackie, in Alhambra, Calif. Her house, he recalled, was on a busy highway with not much neighborhood, and he was often alone, and lonely. He drew to entertain himself.

‘I was a weird kid,’ he told Vogue in 1990. ‘But I was always pretty good with crayons.’

His mother and his older sister, Patricia, would visit on weekends and take Bob to the movies—Technicolor musicals, mostly, that entranced him. ‘It didn’t look like that at my house, and I wanted to be part of that,’ he said. He remembered being dazzled by the dance numbers in ‘An American in Paris.’ When the credits rolled at the end, he discovered that costume design was a job.

Mr. Mackie attended Pasadena City College and then the Chouinard Art Institute, now part of the California Institute of the Arts, before dropping out to work on movies, first with Fred Thompson, then [Jean] Louis and [Edith] Head. (Mr. Mackie sketched the skintight gown that Mr. Louis made for Marilyn Monroe when she sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to President John F. Kennedy in 1962.)

In 1963, he was hired by Ray Aghayan, an Iranian-born designer who was working on Judy Garland’s television variety show. The two became business and romantic partners, sharing the first Emmy ever awarded for costume design, in 1967, for their work on ‘Alice Through the Looking Glass,’ an eye-popping confection of a television movie.

The pair received Oscar nominations for ‘Lady Sings the Blues,’ the 1972 biopic of Billie Holiday starring Ms. Ross, and for ‘Funny Lady,’ the 1975 sequel to ‘Funny Girl.’ Mr. Mackie was nominated on his own for ‘Pennies From Heaven,’ the 1981 film musical starring Steve Martin and [Bernadette] Peters.

He won an Emmy in 1999 for Cher’s costumes in ‘Cher: Live in Concert From Los Angeles,’ and again in 2003, for ‘Cher: The Farewell Tour.’”

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