VANITY FAIR - June 2014

Across America, the nation’s gay uncles are rejoicing. They are streaming out of their condos and onto the streets of South Beach and Palm Springs, so happy are they with this most wondrous news. Cher and Bob Mackie have reunited. It’s true. Though Cher embarked on her latest farewell tour sadly Mackie-less—he was just too busy to make costumes for her—she recently tweeted something saying that she and Mackie were teaming up for the second leg of her tour. So how about that. I mean, it wouldn’t be a Cher tour without Bob Mackie costumes, would it? I feel kinda bad for the people who saw her on the first half of her tour, when she was not back working with her trusty collaborator. I guess they’ll have to go see her again. And you know what? They will. They most definitely will. People who are shelling out for Cher tickets at this point, nearly 16 years after “Believe,” are lifelong, diehard fans. So they will go again to see the Bob Mackie garments. They will put extra food in the cat’s bowl, they will change their answering-machine message (they still have answering machines!) to something sassy, and they will drive off into that desert night, into that Florida afternoon, and they will go see their hero, their queen. That is what America’s gay uncles will do, now that Cher has come to town clad in all the regalia she’s meant to wear.