Fashion Focus

The press release went out on the day of Cher's Aug. 6 return to the Colosseum at Caesars Palace. The pop diva would debut "a new ensemble ... an eyeful of glitter and sequins" for her "Believe" encore.

That's right. A press release. For a costume.

But when the costume is by Bob Mackie? That's merely tradition. Mackie has been the Strip's marquee fashion designer since the 1970s, when publicity bios for Mitzi Gaynor, Raquel Welch or Barbara Eden also touted his name.

"I was somebody they could talk about. The public knew who I was," says the 68-year-old designer, thanks to his "hundreds of hours" of television credits. (Some of his work is now on display in a TV exhibit at Los Angeles' Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising.) "When you hit millions of people in one shot, people do pay attention."

And mostly they paid attention because of Cher. She is his muse, the one singer with whom his career is so entwined, you can't imagine one without the other. "We're sort of like attached at the hip sometimes," he says, adding with a laugh, "fortunately, we're still getting along."

Mackie first met the singer when he was designing costumes for "The Carol Burnett Show" in 1967. When Sonny and Cher landed a summer replacement series four years later, they remembered Mackie.

"All I could do was her clothes because I was doing other stuff," he says. But that was enough. "At that time they'd never seen anything quite like her. So I got all this publicity for her. ... It was a huge hit and the rest is sort of history."

As the show's popularity grew, Cher's get-ups became a focal point, with "people tuning in to see what she was going to wear, how naked she was going to be," Mackie recalls. "I was kind of relieved when the show finally went off the air: 'I just can't come up with another body part to expose this week.' "

They took a break while Cher pursued serious acting, before she summoned him for the Oscar ceremonies of 1986. Feeling a bit snubbed because she wasn't nominated for "Mask," Cher decided to dress like a punk-rock showgirl to be one of the presenters.

"I said, 'You can't go on the Academy Awards looking like this. Don't you think you're pulling focus?' But she was smart. She was in every paper the next day. And they're still printing (photos of) that outfit."

The "reveal" of each Mackie outfit -- a dozen or so in the Colosseum show -- are still a huge part of Cher's act. If Mackie creates a rhinestone and mesh get-up that makes the 62-year-old singer look totally nude save for a dousing of Swarovski Crystal, and if she is going to wear it, all you can do is hit the "send" button on that media alert.

"It's very nude but it's not vulgar. You can't see anything, you just think maybe you can," Mackie says of his latest tour de force.

He scoffs when asked if he's ever in hindsight thought one of his creations was too over the top. "It is a visual thing, it's not radio. People like that, and they love that about her.

"The thing that's interesting about Cher," he adds, "is that she doesn't show like a big drag queen. She doesn't prance around the stage. She just comes out and it's kind of like she has a T-shirt and jeans on, but she doesn't. She just has it on, and that's the way she works it. And that makes her very endearing to the audience."

Perhaps it was destiny that Mackie would become Las Vegas' rhinestone king. He remembers seeing Fluff LeCoque, still den mother for Bally's "Jubilee," performing in a Hollywood revue called "Moulin Rouge" when he was 16.

By the early 1960s, Mackie spent a whirlwind weekend on the Strip while working for Judy Garland's TV show. He saw several shows in one night. "I looked at them and said, 'I could do that.' "

The producer of that influential "Moulin Rouge" happened to be Las Vegas impresario Donn Arden, who later sought out Mackie to design costumes for the MGM's "Hallelujah Hollywood" in 1974.

By then, Mackie already had made his mark on the Strip as costume designer for Mitzi Gaynor and other divas. "That whole kind of star lady coming in every now and then, it sort of grew and grew, and then it just stopped," he says.

But Mackie's costumes still are on display in the finale of "Jubilee," the late Arden's final production. "It was one of those shows I thought I'd never finish. It was huge. And that show I only did the finale, which in itself was bigger than most shows."

The last time he saw the revue, he wondered how he was able to come up with so many costume variations for the showgirls.

"Not everybody is good at that and some people are," he says. "Designing a showgirl has never been a problem with me."

Contact reporter Mike Weatherford at mweatherford@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0288.