Bob Mackie has the golden touch, creating winning looks for the biggest stars on the planet — Marilyn Monroe, Cher, Tina Turner, Diana Ross, Elton John, Pink — in a career spanning 60 years. It’s only fitting that amid all his sequins, sheer and souffle designs, there’s one he was admittedly “embarrassed” to call his own for years.
In the new documentary Bob Mackie: Naked Illusion, Mackie reflected on designing Cher’s controversial look for her 1989 “If I Could Turn Back Time” video. In the film, out now, Mackie called the “seat belt” outfit — which was a sheer bodystocking other than two fabric strips forming a V on the front and a small back strip over her tattooed buttocks — “vulgar.”
“We put a lot of wild, sexy clothes on her at different times,” Mackie told Yahoo Entertainment. “Sometimes I’d say, ‘Well, you can’t wear that for this’ … an award show or whatever, and she would [disappointedly reply], OK.’ But she wanted to wear that. Bicycle pants were in, but see-through bicycle pants are really scary.”
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Mackie, who had outfitted the singer for more than a decade at that point, including for the Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour and the Cher show, said he agreed to design it — with Cher’s agreed-upon silence.
“I said, ‘Please don’t tell anyone that I designed this,’” he said with a laugh. “‘Don’t let anyone know this. I’m embarrassed,’ and she was fine about it. Now she admits that, no, it wasn’t so good.”
The documentary Bob Mackie: Naked Illusion looks at the costume designer’s long career — and his collaborations with stars including Cher. (John Salangsang/Variety via Getty Images)
It was more than her outfit that caused a stir. Cher shot the video aboard the battleship USS Missouri with a couple hundred hungry sailors as extras. While a U.S. Navy spokesperson apparently reviewed the lyrics of Cher’s song, they didn’t fully examine her wardrobe for the video until she emerged to perform. The storyboards presented to Navy officials reportedly showed the sheer outfit, so there wasn’t much to be done.
Cher in her 1989 “If I Could Turn Back Time” video. (Cher via YouTube)
There was so much backlash to the video — from her outfit to it being performed on a warship used in World War II. After complaints, MTV banned the video from airing until after 9 p.m.
Beyond Cher’s outfit, Mackie’s jaw also dropped at the singer’s choice to have her young son, Elijah Blue Allman, who was 12 at the time, play guitar in the video “with all these horny sailors on deck,” Mackie said. “I mean … you go: Ugh. And, of course, it played forever, and we’re still seeing it.”
With the passage of time — and many other wild outfits — Cher’s look has become more iconic than controversial.
“Nobody else could get away with it, let me tell you,” Mackie said, adding: “Who has a figure like that really — and a look that nobody else has?”
That wasn’t the only time one of Mackie’s designs for Cher was banned. While the “naked dress” has had a huge resurgence in Hollywood over the last several years, Cher wearing a feathered and sequined naked illusion dress, created by Mackie and Ray Aghayan, on the cover of Time magazine in 1975 also caused a kerfuffle.
Cher on the cover of Time in March 1975 in a Mackie illusion dress. (Richard Avedon/Time magazine)
Cher first wore the dress — made of souffle, a sheer fabric that is no longer in use because it is highly flammable — for a Vogue photo shoot with Richard Avedon and to her first Met Gala in late 1974.
“It was a fabric that actually was against the law in this country, but Marlene Dietrich had brought it in for her gowns and we had the same dress people working for us as Dietrich,” Mackie explained.
As for his creation for Cher, “It’s just one of those crazy, crazy things, but it got a lot of attention.”
In 1975, one of Avedon’s photos was used for a Time cover — “Cher Glad Rags to Riches” — and it received even more attention.
Cher and Bob Mackie at the 1974 Met Gala. (Ron Galella/Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images)
“It was banned in the South,” Mackie said of the cover. “Some people thought [the dress] was just shocking. You couldn’t see anything, but you thought you could. You make them think they’re seeing everything, but they don’t see anything.”
Today, “people are still printing that picture of the cover of Time magazine,” Mackie said with disbelief.
Cher appears in Mackie’s doc, recounting their fashion hits through the years. They’ve continued working together, with Mackie winning a Tony Award for Costume Design for Broadway’s The Cher Show in 2019.
“We’ve known each other so long now,” Mackie said. “We’re friends and we know we’re there if [the other one] needs us. It’s just the way it is.”
Some of Mackie’s designs and sketches, including several he did for Cher, go up for auction at Julien’s Auctions on Dec. 11. Twenty-five of the items pertain to Cher, including the dress she wore to the 1983 Academy Awards. She also wore it during her 1979 Cher… Special when she was onstage with Dolly Parton.
“How often do you get to do something you wanted to do your whole life?” Mackie said of his long-spanning career. “Not everybody [does].”
Bob Mackie: Naked Illusion is playing in select theaters.
