Bob Mackie Reinvents Himself for a New Generation

Bob Mackie never met a sequin he didn’t like — or a paillette or marabou feather, for that matter. Over the course of a nearly 60-year career, he’s designed jaw-dropping gowns for performers including Judy Garland and Marilyn Monroe. He survived the scorn of Seventh Avenue, which dismissed him as Mr. Hollywood, created outfits for the drag queen RuPaul, appeared in two episodes of “The Love Boat,” and most recently re-created the iconic gowns for “The Cher Show,” a jukebox musical on Broadway based on the client with whom he’s had the longest and most complicated relationship. In a wide-ranging conversation with Fern Mallis, as part of her “Fashion Icons With Fern Mallis” series at the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan, the designer lifted the curtain on the talented, glamorous and ill-behaved. Sounding like an octogenarian uncle who believes he’s earned the right to speak in uncensored sound bites, Mackie scrunched up his face when Mallis rattled off his credentials designing for “Aretha Franklin, Reese Witherspoon, Kourtney Kardashian, and of course, Diana Ross.” “A lot of those people are pains in the a–,” Mackie said, raising his shoulders toward his ears in a gesture that seemed to say, “I know I shouldn’t have said that,

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