Just months after Palm Springs Art Museum celebrated Bob Mackie at its dazzling Art Party 2026, the legendary designer has died at 87.
PALM SPRINGS, CA (The Hollywood Times) 9/14/26 – It is difficult to believe that only months ago I was at the Palm Springs Art Museum celebrating the extraordinary Bob Mackie, smiling, surrounded by friends, admirers and the unmistakable glamour that followed him throughout his remarkable career.
Today, Palm Springs and the entertainment world are mourning him.
Bob Mackie, the legendary fashion and costume designer whose spectacular creations helped define Hollywood glamour for generations, died Monday, September 14, in Palm Springs. He was 87. His representative confirmed that Mackie died of pneumonia.
For those of us fortunate enough to attend Art Party 2026 at the Palm Springs Art Museum on January 24, the news feels especially poignant.
That sold-out evening was devoted entirely to celebrating Mackie while he was here to experience the love and appreciation himself. I attended representing The Hollywood Times and the Milano Foundation, proud Silver Sponsors of the event, and looking back now, I am especially grateful to have witnessed such a joyful tribute to a man whose imagination changed the visual language of entertainment.
At the time I wrote that the evening was where “glamour, creativity, and community came together in full force to honor the legendary Bob Mackie.” Today, those words carry a very different weight.
Most moving of all was the presence of his longtime friend and collaborator Carol Burnett, who presented Mackie with the Art Party Honoree Award. The two shared a creative partnership stretching back to The Carol Burnett Show, where Mackie’s costumes became essential pieces of television history, sometimes glamorous, sometimes outrageous, and frequently as funny as the sketches themselves.
Tony Award winner Stephanie J. Block, who portrayed Cher in The Cher Show, also performed that evening. Mackie won the Tony Award for Best Costume Design of a Musical for that Broadway production, which recreated many of his famous designs from his original patterns.
There was laughter, fashion, affection and an overwhelming sense that everyone understood we were in the presence of someone special.
We just didn’t know how precious that moment would soon become.
Mackie’s career was almost impossible to summarize because his work touched so many chapters of entertainment history.
Cher. Carol Burnett. Diana Ross. Tina Turner. Bette Midler. Elton John. Barbra Streisand. Liza Minnelli.
The list reads like a history of show business itself.
Yet Mackie never simply dressed stars. He understood performance. His costumes helped performers become larger versions of themselves, glamorous, theatrical, funny, sexy, fearless and unforgettable.
Across his career, Mackie earned nine Emmy Awards, received three Academy Award nominations and won a Tony Award for The Cher Show. He was inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame and received the CFDA’s Geoffrey Beene Lifetime Achievement Award.
One of his most famous collaborations was with Cher, beginning in the early 1970s. Their work together produced some of the most instantly recognizable fashion images in popular culture, from barely-there television costumes to towering headdresses, beads, feathers and extraordinary red-carpet creations.
And then there was Carol Burnett.
Mackie’s costumes for The Carol Burnett Show didn’t merely decorate the comedy — they often helped create it. Perhaps none is more famous than Burnett’s curtain dress from the show’s Gone With the Wind parody, complete with the curtain rod still attached. That costume became so iconic it ultimately entered the Smithsonian’s collection.
Mackie’s death is particularly personal for Palm Springs, the community where he spent his final years and where he died Monday.
The Palm Springs Art Museum, which had so recently celebrated him, issued a heartfelt message to Art Party supporters following news of his passing:
“His brilliance and unmistakable sense of glamour will continue to inspire generations.”
The museum also expressed gratitude that the Palm Springs community had the opportunity to honor Mackie during his lifetime.
That may be the greatest comfort in remembering January’s Art Party.
Bob Mackie got to see the room.
He got to hear the applause.
He got to stand beside Carol Burnett.
He got to experience an entire community saying, in person: Your work mattered. Your imagination mattered. You mattered.
When I left the museum that night, I wrote that Art Party 2026 had done more than honor Bob Mackie, it had celebrated what happens when art, vision and community come together.
Today, I believe that even more strongly.
The sequins may eventually leave the stage, but the sparkle Bob Mackie gave Hollywood isn’t going anywhere.
Rest in glamour, Bob. Palm Springs was lucky to celebrate you one more time.
By Valerie Milano, The Hollywood Times
