Level 1 — Absolute Beginner
Bob Mackie made clothes for famous singers and actors. He liked shiny things. He used many small mirrors and feathers. People called his clothes magic.
He worked for the singer Cher for many years. He also made clothes for Carol Burnett on television. His clothes were funny sometimes and beautiful other times.
Bob Mackie won nine Emmy awards. An Emmy is a prize for television work. He also went into a hall of fame in 2002.
On Monday, Bob Mackie died. He was 87 years old. He was in Palm Springs, in California. Many stars said thank you to him.
- designer
- a person who plans how clothes or objects will look
- costume
- special clothes worn on stage or on television
- shiny
- bright, like something that reflects light
- feather
- one of the light soft parts that cover a bird
- famous
- known by very many people
- prize
- something you win for doing well
- stage
- the place where singers and actors perform
- died
- stopped living
Level 2 — Elementary
Bob Mackie, one of the best known costume designers in American entertainment, died of pneumonia on Monday in Palm Springs, California. He was 87 years old and had worked in the business for more than sixty years.
He started out as a sketch artist, drawing ideas for other film costume designers. In the 1960s he designed the costumes for Mitzi Gaynor's Las Vegas revues, and after that he spent eleven years dressing the cast of The Carol Burnett Show.
His most famous partnership was with Cher. Together they created outfits so daring that people still talk about them decades later. He also dressed Diana Ross, Tina Turner, Dolly Parton and Bette Midler.
Mackie won nine Emmy Awards, received three Oscar nominations, and joined the Television Academy Hall of Fame in 2002. He also designed a long series of Barbie dolls, which brought his style into ordinary homes.
- pneumonia
- a serious illness that affects the lungs
- sketch artist
- a person who draws quick pictures of ideas
- revue
- a stage show with songs, dancing and short comic scenes
- cast
- all the actors who appear in a show
- partnership
- a working relationship between two people
- daring
- bold and surprising, not safe or ordinary
- nomination
- being officially chosen as a candidate for a prize
- hall of fame
- a list honouring the most important people in a field
Level 3 — Intermediate
Bob Mackie, who died of pneumonia at his home in Palm Springs on Monday at the age of 87, spent six decades convincing American audiences that a television screen could hold something genuinely spectacular. His medium was sequins, beadwork, feathers and strategically placed nothing at all, and he applied it to a generation of performers who became inseparable from his work.
He came up the traditional way, sketching for established film designers before landing his own credits. The 1960s brought Mitzi Gaynor's Las Vegas revues, and then eleven seasons on The Carol Burnett Show, where he proved a rarer talent than glamour alone: he could design a joke. The curtain-rod dress Burnett wore in a Gone With the Wind parody is arguably the most quoted costume in the history of American television comedy.
His collaboration with Cher was of a different order. The pair produced outfits calculated to be discussed the following morning, most famously at the 1986 Academy Awards, and in doing so tested how much spectacle a mainstream broadcast would tolerate. Diana Ross, Tina Turner, Dolly Parton, Bette Midler and Elton John all passed through his workroom.
The industry recognition followed: nine Emmy Awards, three Academy Award nominations, and induction into the Television Academy Hall of Fame in 2002. A long run of Barbie dolls carried his silhouette into houses that would never see a Las Vegas stage, which is perhaps the most accurate measure of how far his aesthetic travelled.
- spectacular
- very impressive to look at
- sequin
- a small shiny disc sewn onto clothing for decoration
- credit
- official recognition for work on a film or show
- parody
- a funny imitation of a serious work
- collaboration
- the act of working together on something
- mainstream
- accepted by and aimed at most ordinary people
- induction
- the act of formally admitting someone to an honour or group
- aesthetic
- a particular style or sense of beauty
Level 4 — Advanced
Bob Mackie, who died of pneumonia at 87 on Monday at his home in Palm Springs, built a career on a proposition that sounds obvious now and was not obvious then: that broadcast television, a medium constrained by small screens and nervous sponsors, could be a vehicle for genuine visual excess. Over roughly six decades he made sequins, bugle beads, ostrich feathers and carefully judged transparency into a recognisable American vernacular of glamour.
His formation was conventional. He sketched for established film costume designers before accumulating credits of his own, dressed Mitzi Gaynor's Las Vegas revues through the 1960s, and then spent eleven seasons as the costume designer of The Carol Burnett Show. That last post revealed a faculty rarely paired with couture instincts, namely comic timing rendered in fabric. The curtain-rod gown Burnett wore in the programme's Gone With the Wind sketch functions as a visual punchline that requires no dialogue, and it survives in the cultural memory more durably than most of the scripts around it.
The Cher collaboration operated on different terms. Those garments were designed to be argued about, engineered for the next morning's conversation rather than for the room they were worn in, and they progressively expanded what a network censor would sign off on. Diana Ross, Tina Turner, Dolly Parton, Bette Midler and Elton John all drew on the same workshop, and in each case Mackie's contribution was less decoration than persona construction, a fixing of stage identity in thread.
The honours accumulated accordingly: nine Emmy Awards, three Academy Award nominations, and entry to the Television Academy Hall of Fame in 2002. Yet the most telling artefact may be commercial rather than ceremonial. A sustained line of Mackie-designed Barbie dolls delivered his silhouette to households with no connection to Las Vegas or Los Angeles, which is the rare case of a designer's sensibility being distributed at toy-aisle scale without meaningful dilution.
- proposition
- an idea or claim put forward for consideration
- vernacular
- the ordinary everyday style or language of a place
- couture
- the making of expensive, custom-fitted high fashion
- faculty
- a natural ability or skill
- censor
- an official who decides what may be shown to the public
- persona
- the public character a performer presents
- artefact
- an object made by people, often studied as evidence
- dilution
- the weakening of something by mixing or spreading it out
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