Bob Mackie worked closely with Cher for decades, producing some of her most iconic looks — but there’s one outfit he just can’t get behind.
Speaking with Page Six in an interview published on Sunday, January 26, Mackie, 84, admitted that he didn’t like how Cher, 78, chose to wear one of his designs for her 1989 “If I Could Turn Back Time” music video. In the video, the pop icon infamously donned a see-through mesh bodysuit and leather jacket combo — a look that was a little too sexy for Mackie’s taste.
“Playing the bass guitar is her 12-year-old son [Elijah Blue] — there with her whole being out and everything else!” Mackie told the outlet. “I told her, ‘Please don’t tell anyone I had anything to do with this because I don’t really approve. This is not family viewing.’”
The fashion designer, who has styled the likes of Elton John, Carol Burnett and even Marilyn Monroe, also admitted that he wasn’t entirely sure he would mesh well with Cher at first.
“I thought, this girl is not my style,” he told Page Six. “All the pictures of her were like frowning and pouting with Sonny [Bono].” Mackie met Cher in the mid-1960s as a guest on The Carol Burnett Show.
“She was adorable,” he said. “She looked like Audrey Hepburn’s younger sister at that point. Her hair in little pigtails, a little yellow sundress. I thought I could do anything on her — she’ll look amazing. She could be anything she wanted to be.”
Mackie has previously spoken about his and Cher’s fateful meeting, telling Women’s Wear Daily in 2013, “It was 1967 and I was working on a loose thread on a beaded gown and Cher came over and said, ‘Oh, someday I’m going to have one of those.’ And we became friends after that.”
He added at the time, “It’s not like dressing a regular person; it’s like dressing a crazy goddess. Sometimes she’s an Egyptian goddess, and sometimes she’s a biker chic goddess.”
The duo worked together through the 1970s and ‘80s — the designer exclusively worked with Cher during The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour, which began in 1971 and ran for four years. Mackie has designed many of Cher’s most iconic looks, including her feathered headdress from the 1986 Academy Awards. However, it was announced they had ended their partnership in 2014 when he chose not to work on her latest tour.
“Nobody wanted to design this last tour more than I did! I am sick about it,” Mackie told Us Weekly at the time. “My professional and business commitments were just too great. There simply was not enough time to give this wonderful project the proper amount of care and attention it deserves. After all these years of collaborating, it is like turning down your own little sister, and how many guys have a little sister like Cher.”
