Cher in 1974 and Bob Mackie in January 2025.Photo:Ron Galella/WireImage; Unique Nicole/Getty
Ron Galella/WireImage; Unique Nicole/Getty
Bob Mackieis looking back on the stirChercaused with the “naked illusion dress” she wore to the 1974Met Gala.
In an interview about the new documentary,Bob Mackie: Naked Illusion,the iconic designer, 85, told PEOPLE that Cher picked the controversial gown herself.
“I said to her, ‘What do you want to wear to that, to the Metropolitan, when we go there?’ ” Mackie recalled. “She wanted me to go with her and I said, ‘I’ll go with you. But what do you want to wear? You have to wear something that we’ve done.’ And she pauses and says, ‘I want to wear the dress with the feathers.’ ”
Cher and Bob Mackie at the 1974 Met Gala.Ron Galella/Ron Galella Collection via Getty
Ron Galella/Ron Galella Collection via Getty
“The place went crazy,” Mackie toldInterview. “I’ve never seen so many photographers just come out of the shadows at the Met and take her picture. And of course she was in every newspaper the next day, and they’ve been printing it in the last 50 years, over and over again.”
“But it was just amazing,” he added. “People were horrified, they thought, that’s not fashion, she’s just naked at the Metropolitan.”
Che and Bob Mackie in 2024.Steve Granitz/FilmMagic
Steve Granitz/FilmMagic
“I was so surprised it was even there,” Mackie toldInterviewof theTimecover. “She was supposed to wear something entirely different. And whoever the publisher was, looked at that other picture of Richard Avedon’s and went, ‘Let’s put this on the cover, we’ll sell more of these.’ ”
“How often do you get a girl that looks like that, dressed like that, on the cover ofTimemagazine?” Mackie said. “Usually it was some funny old Russian man who everybody hated, so it was just the weirdest thing. They were pulling them off the newsstands in the South and tearing off the front cover, it was just shocking.”
Cher at the 1986 Academy Awards.Bettmann Archive/Getty
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Mackie and Cher continued to collaborate throughout the ’70s and ’80s. In 1986, they made headlines for another shocking look: a midriff-baring, impossibly low-slung two-piece gown topped with an outlandish feathered headdress that the “If I Could Turn Back Time” singerwore to the Academy Awards.
As Mackie explains in the documentary, the look was a return to Cher’s campy, glamorous roots after appearing as more down-to-earth characters in acclaimed films likeSilkwoodandMask.
source: people.com
