Bob Mackie, the fashion designer whose visually provocative Hollywood aesthetic came to epitomize glamour throughout the 1970s — encompassing the outfitting of Carol Burnett in some of her most zany costumes and Cher in her most risqué — died Monday.

He was 87.

“He lived his 87 years to the fullest, realising his aspiration to be a Fashion and Costume Designer, which was all he ever wished to do,” read a statement posted to his social media accounts.

Mackie died in Palm Springs, California, of pneumonia, his publicist said.

Stylized as the “Designer to the Stars,” Mackie garnered nine Emmy Awards and a Tony Award, alongside nominations for three Oscars—one of which recognized her work on Barbra Streisand’s “Funny Lady,” wherein she donned a sheer batwing gown.

In 2002, she was enshrined in the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences’ Hall of Fame.

He fashioned gowns for Madonna, Streisand, Sharon Stone, Diana Ross, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus, along with concert costumes for Pink.

When Marilyn Monroe delivered a breathy, seductive rendition of “Happy Birthday” at a fundraiser for President John F. Kennedy and the Democratic National Committee, she did so attired in a sheer, beaded gown that Mackie had conjured in a sketch.

His influence is discernible in the stylistic proclivities of Kendall Jenner and Bella Hadid.

His archival creations are today donned by the likes of Anya Taylor-Joy, Miley Cyrus and Zendaya, the latter of whom wore a Mackie gown to honor Cher at the 2024 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony.

When Taylor Swift sought to evoke the semblance of a showgirl for the cover of her 2025 album “The Life of a Showgirl,” she turned to certain Mackie originals.

Sequins and embellishment were the natural instruments of his craft — further sobriquets included the Sultan of Sequins, the Rajah of Rhinestones and the Guru of Glitter — yet he cleaved to a singularly unpretentious credo: “You don’t try to change anybody, you just try to make them look better than ever,” he remarked in 2018.

Homages poured in from fellow designers and from those fortunate enough to have donned his creations.

The actor Kristin Chenoweth pronounced him a “legend,” while the designer Isaac Mizrahi wrote, simply, “heartbroken.”

The actor Alyssa Milano deemed him “one of the best that ever was.”

On Broadway, Mackie costumed the casts of “On the Town” in 1971 and “Moon Over Buffalo” in 1995.

He likewise devised costumes for Burnett in the revue “Putting It Together,” for Debbie Reynolds in “Debbie” in 1976, for Liza Minnelli in “Minnelli on Minnelli” in 1999 and, most recently, for the cast of “The Cher Show,” thereby winning his Tony Award.

A Southern California native, Mackie had, from a tender age, wholeheartedly embraced the notion of Hollywood movie glamour, inspired by Technicolor musicals.

He would dream elaborate costumes for his mother and sister and sketch them, and he was active in costume and set design of his high school plays.

He went to Pasadena City College to study advertising and illustration, and then costume design at LA’s Chouinard Art Institute.

He, too, came of age idolizing the panoply of variety-show and pop luminaries of the 1950s and ’60s—their glittering wardrobes above all.

He went on to work for the costume designer Edith Head, and thence secured the position on “The Carol Burnett Show.”

He and Burnett shared an intimate friendship, collaborating on such indelible characters as Nora Desmond, Eunice, and her interpretation of Scarlett O’Hara in “Gone With the Wind” — dubbed Starlet O’Hara — clad in her green curtain dress mounted on its rods.

“I love doing funny things,” Mackie remarked in a 1999 interview with reporters.

“One week I’d have to make Carol an unattractive postal worker, and who knows what I’d have to do the next.”

(Starlet’s dress now resides in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History.)

Mackie’s television endeavours persisted with “The Sonny and Cher Show,” following Cher’s guest appearance on Burnett’s programme, whereupon she developed a fondness for him.

He had remarked that her Laverne persona, resplendent in leopard-print jumpsuit and dangling earrings, ranked among his particular favourites.

He and Cher underwent a decidedly more alluring metamorphosis once she transitioned to the silver screen and received an invitation to the Academy Awards.

Each of those beaded, midriff-revealing ensembles she would don upon the staid red carpets originated from Mackie.

Mackie attended the 1974 Met Gala with Cher on his arm, attired in what is arguably one of the most celebrated so-called naked dresses of all time: a diaphanous beaded gown replete with white feathered sleeves and a white feathered skirt.

She and the dress ultimately graced the cover of Time magazine.

Attire such as the 1986 beaded spiderweb — donned alongside a complementary Mohawk — and the diaphanous, scarcely-there gown she wore upon securing her best actress accolade in 1988 proved arresting spectacles, provoking no small measure of scandalised chatter at the time.

"The outfits are occasionally mistaken for fashion, yet they are costumes—as one might don for a character in a play," Mackie said in 1999.

"I want people to have fun. I want people to exclaim 'Wasn't that interesting?' or 'Wasn't that wild?'"

Mackie enjoyed a measure of retail success during the 1980s and ’90s, having launched a ready-to-wear line in 1982 that would ultimately find its way onto the runway at New York Fashion Week; he was, moreover, an early partner of QVC.

Naked dresses only proliferated further, yet Mackie, in his later years, remained decidedly unimpressed.

“You watch awards shows and say, ‘Oh, cover up! Put it away! Honey, I don’t need to see all of that!’

It gets to be so vulgar, you don’t even want to look at it anymore,” he told The Hollywood Reporter in 2024.

“I was so bored watching The Met Ball — everyone exposing everything, the same look-alike dress — I shut it off.

If you’ve seen one Kardashian, you’ve seen them all.

And we have seen all of them.”

Mackie further conceived, for Mattel, dozens of distinct Barbie dolls, encompassing a diverse array of facial sculpts, physiques, and narrative arcs.

He is acknowledged as the inaugural designer to have produced a wholly realized doll.

Among these was Lady Dracula Cher, complete with diminutive infant fangs and packaging fashioned to resemble a coffin.

The documentary “Bob Mackie: Naked Illusion” made its debut in 2024.

A Mackie dress that Cher had worn in 1975 went under the hammer in 2024, fetching $101,600 — a sum 25 times its original estimate.

Mackie was married to the showgirl Lulu Porter from 1960 until 1963; their son, the makeup artist Robert Gordon Mackie Jr., succumbed to AIDS at the age of 35.

The costume designer Ray Aghayan, his longtime partner, passed away in 2011.

He had asserted that practicality had never constituted a driving force in his design: “It’s all about looking good and living your fantasies.”

In 2017, a 71-year-old Cher once again commanded attention, attired in two Bob Mackie originals at the Billboard Music Awards.

It was an evocation of a bygone era, wholly at odds with the uninspired fashion landscape he beheld.

"Nothing retains any semblance of intrigue anymore," he told Vogue in 2017.

"One merely witnesses the same spectacle reiterated ad nauseam, devoid of any surprises.

Regrettably, one scarcely encounters fashion anymore."