Cher (and Sonny) are often credited with bringing bellbottoms into popularity during the 1960s. And Cher is known for her crop-top pantsuits and gowns in the 1970s (to show off her flat abs and her bellybutton). And Cher has often been seen as both an experimental fashion icon (on her own) and a glamour fashion icon (due to her longtime association and collaboration with the designer Bob Mackie).

1960s

From 16 Magazine:

Dear Cher, Do you think it is wrong for a girl to try and make herself look like another girl? For instance, I think you are beautiful and I model my hair, clothes and looks after you. Who would I try to look like? I flip for John Lennon. Worried, Niagara Falls, Ont.

Dear Worried,  If you are 14 or younger, I think it is quite a good thing to choose another girl whom you admire to model yourself after. However, as you get older, you should start discovering yourself. You should—sooner or later—get your own style. That’s like letting the real you emerge. Everybody starts by copying, but in the end they must come to themselves. I agree with you that John Lennon is quite flippy.

Dear Cher, I don’t like the way I look and I want to do something about it. What should I do to change my looks and become a new me? Waiting, Charleston, S.C.

Dear Waiting, I think it’s very exciting to do yourself over from head to toe once in a while. The first thing you should do is get a bunch of hair styling and beauty magazines (or, better yet, order 16’s Popularity and Beauty Book—see the ad on the following page). When you have gathered together all of these magazines, scan through them and try to find your type. Study all the types for people with a face shaped like yours. Are you round, oval or square? Magazines dealing with make-up and beauty tips cover all types. The hair magazines have setting and comb-out instructions for all lengths and colors of hair. The hair books also tell you how to correct faults—like if your hair is too curly, what to do, etc. Try to get a girlfriend to join you in your campaign to re-do yourself. It is always more fun when you have someone to share your thoughts with and to exchange ideas with. The two of you could spend a “beauty weekend” together and probably come out with some great new results. Good luck.

The 1970s

The magazine Sonny & Cher, A Family Again (1977) has a picture of Cher experimenting with fabric. The magazine states Cher likes to experiment with clothes and accessories and hairdos and cosmetics to develop “the Cher look.” She’s an individual even in blue jeans and no makeup.”

They show another picture of Cher and say she is blasting the myth that people with long noses shouldn’t wear tight caps.

In Cher Superstar(1975) the authors say Cher wear clothes she can “carry off.” And she shows a range of outfits, her private wardrobe rumored to have 1,000 gowns and 500 pairs of shoes. They show Cher in courtroom outfits and casual outfits and glamour gowns and say she “has brought back razzle dazzle to Hollywood.” Cher says she loves hats and they show her in a cowboy hat. There’s a picture of the $15,000 Naked Dress. Cher likes things that are shimmery, the magazine says. They show Cher at a party with Sonny at Pips Nightclub for her 29th birthday party. They call her look “hippie with spangles.” The quote her saying “I wear my clothes. My clothes don’t wear me.”

The show the glamourous and the kooky looks.

In the article “The special look of all-out glamour, Cher (date unknown) they interview Cher.

What colors do you feel look best on you? I love white, turquoise and purple. I don’t look good in gray or brown.

Cher says, “the ladies in Beverly Hills have all got the uniform together, but they have no adventure….they have their Vuitton bag and a Gucci belt and they go to places where everyone looks like they belong. I like the individual look and the look that says “I know what to do with myself.”

The article ends in concluding that “Cher adds something special to America. It’s glamour. She’s more than a beauty. She’s a phenomenon. She creates excitement with much more than her looks, it’s her talent, her sense of comedy, her warmth.”

Here is an excerpt from the book Seventies Glamour by David Willis (2014) and its page on Cher:

“When she was starting out as a teenager, married to Sonny Bono, Cher had a bohemian, hippie look–her style was “freaked out” and funky. But when they landed The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour in 1971, Cher hired designer Bob Mackie to work with her on the costumes for the show. Mackie knew exactly how to highlight her dark, exotic, long-legged beauty. The designer’s expertise with feathers, sheer fabrics, beading, furs and theatrical glamour helped transform Cher into an iconic goddess. ‘There hasn’t been a star like Cher since Dietrich or Garbo,’ Mackie said. ‘She’s a high-fashion star who appeals to people of all ages. She’s a great influence on adults and teenagers. She can stand there in the wildest garb and get away with it. She has a sense of humor about her clothes as well as a sexy, glamourous feeling.’ Many of Cher’s costumes on the show were considered quite daring….she made television history.

[They repeat the error that she was the first woman on the air to expose her navel, when she was just the first woman to regularly do it]

“Cher was a stylish, stunning chameleon. She became a gutsy maverick and the public loved it. They still do.”

In The Art of Bob Mackie (2021) by Frank Vlastnik and Laura Ross they talk about how on The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour, “Cher was chic in a whole new way…took glamour to a whole new level…[and was] the queen of the bare midriff…”

Quoting Bob Mackie from The Chicago Sun Times (2018) “Cher could wear anything! She just had the most beautiful shoulders, the most beautiful arms. There was an article that once said she has the best armpits in the business because they were just sculpted. And that beautiful midriff…the thing about Cher is that she never looked vulgar in anything. It always looks so natural and easy. And there weren’t very many people, very many women that could really pull that off.”

The 1980s

When Cher wears an eclectic outfit these days (she doesn’t always do this, she has lots of different looks and strategies), she wears a kind of mashup of objects and patterns:

…but this is not new. And I dug back into my scrapbook to start finding early examples of Cher doing this in the 1980s. You could even argue her “kooky” side goes back to the 1960s with the crazy patterns and fur vests, or her somewhat more glamourous airport photos of the 1970s with a stylish feature that might be incongruous with other elements she was wearing (a much deeper dive is required here); but my theory is that her paparazzi fashion was at its pinnacle of eclectic in the 1980s when she had to cut her hair due to damage incurred preparing for the movie Mask.

Many don’t remember this era but it created a punk Cher and she really ran with it. Her outfits were a collage of things that kept her firmly ensconced on Blackwell’s Worst Dressed List for the whole decade.

She’s still doing it and now people love it. The evolution of this punk era is as follows:

She was doing fashion mashups that seemed kind of uncomfortably unglamourous at the time but in hindsight they look pretty interesting.

More outfits from the era:

And she continued to take fashion risks (both mild and extreme) even after her hair grew back out:

A cute photo of Cher with Elijah during the Skunk Era:

The 2010s

In the article What Cher Has To Say About Beauty (2019) from Into the Gloss:

“I would do exactly what I wanted to, no matter what. I mean…people can say I dressed like a fool, I don’t have good taste. It’s not about good or bad clothes; it’s about freedom.”

“The only things that are important are work, children and men…as long as I can have all the clothes I want.”

“You know, people said that I wasn’t serious because of the way I dressed. But it’s expression. It’s like when you put your makeup on, you’re an artist painting a canvas. And when you dress, you’re expressing yourself in whatever way you feel like. You should never be inhibited by what people expect you to do.”

[Of the 1960s looks] “It was a deal where I hadn’t worn dresses and then someone picked up the thought that I never wore dresses, and then someone asked me, ‘Well, do you wear dresses?’ And I just said, ‘No, I don’t.’ I didn’t wear them, until I saw the Pope, and I had to wear one.”

“It’s not bullshit to express yourself in the way you want to, and it helps girls to not be afraid to express themselves.”

“I feel badly for [men] in some ways. Well, I can wear pants and a dress, you know?”

“Until you’re ready to look foolish, you’ll never have the possibility of being great.”

The 2020s

In Style Codes: Cher Natalie Hammond (2025) has deconstructed Cher style in these ways:

  1. Dress to the beat of your own drum:
    take stock of what you have, get rid of stuff you can’t wear, find gaps, find out what would be interesting to you.
  2. Hone a signature silhouette:
    like armpits, for example, a belly button, find out where where to stand out or want to flair out and where to tuck in what you want to de-emphasize, what to elongate and what to shorten
  3. Don’t be afraid to embellish:
    beads, feathers, sequins, fringe, studs, crystals, pearls…
  4. Shake up your makeup (see the makeup chapter)
  5. Find the colors that make you feel fabulous:
    she reviews Cher’s 60s paisley prints, 60s pinks and greens, the vinyl minidress in yellow, primary colors, the 1970s dazzle, aquamarine, jewel tones, the 1980s boldness but less glamour, more cool, black on MTV videos and appearances
  6. Love your rock ‘n’ roll leather:
    the leather oversized jacket, studs, extra zips, the belt undone, cuffs, leather gowns, boots, even leather in blue.
  7. Double down on denim:
    Cher in embellished jeans, Levis, patches, with a jeans jacket
  8. Embrace an alter ego:
    Cher’s airport outfits, star glasses, plaids, knee-high boots and leggings
  9. Choose eye-catching add-ons:
    The Vanity Fair cover and 1987 Met Gala gown ear pieces, hats, layered necklaces, shoes, earrings, hoops to dangles, headdresses and crowns
  10. Experiment with big-personality prints:
    The 1960s Union Jack outfit, big print pants, stripes in the 60s, checkerboards, florals, recently with animal prints and how Cher likes to clash prints

In the Style Icons: Cher paper doll book by Elizabeth Weitzman, illustrations by Helen Green (2026) Weitzman calls Cher “a shape-shifter, a natural rebel and a striking beauty who found herself often out-of-step with the times. She never cared about trends or styles or other people’s opinions”

Weitzman names her major archetypes:

  • The Free Spirit
  • The Warrior Goddess
  • The Disco Diva
  • The Comeback Queen

Cher’s looks are not calculated reinventions, Weitzman correctly states, but embodiments of self-expression. “She was often written off for being too odd, too old, too much and that she is a lifelong rejector of sexism, ageism, homophobia and ridged conventionality often articulated through fashion itself.”

She calls Cher “a natural born disrupter.”

In the late 1970s disco-era Cher became “unapologetically sexual” and “enthusiastically camp.” She has influenced Madonna, Lady Gaga, Cardi B and Beyonce and is still going  strong in her 9th decade of show business.

The paper dolls illustrate Cher’s iconic looks from the 1970s and beyond:

  • the 1973 Golden Globes outfit
  • the 1973 Oscars gold halter dress
  • the Valentines day outfit from the Comedy Hour
  • the 1974 Met Gala dress
  • the blue jumpsuit from the 1978 Harry Langdon session with pirate boots (the young kids love this one)
  • the Take Me Home album cover from 1979
  • the 58th Oscars “showgirl inspired towering headdress getup” and the “f.u. was “legend”
  • the 1987 Moonstruck movie dress (which oddly there are no good photos online for that)
  • the Turn Back Time V-fit (the “seat-belt” outfit)
  • the 2023 Carol Burnett angel dress

She quotes Bob Mackie to say he and Cher were often “surprised by their own gall.”

Mistakenly Weitzman  states Cher has continued to wear versions of the V-fit in the years since. She wore it only a few times since. She wears the Hole Fit for “Turn Back Time” now and that’s the outfit we’ve seen many variations of through the years, most recently in 2025:

The Angel outfit was seen in another variation on the Dressed to Kill tour and in latter-day Vegas shows.

The book talks about signatures of Mackie: illusion fabrics, hand-sewn beading, lots of sequins, and extravagant headpiece.

This picture from Celebration at Caesars shows how big the headdresses could get:

The Garnier Diamond Sleek Hair Ad and Q&A (2026)

(Video of Q&A)

  1. What’s a beauty rule you completely ignore?
    Cher: Almost everything. I just don’t believe in rules. I just don’t. It’s like I don’t want it, you know. Tell someone else.
  2. Full glam or natural look?
    Cher: Aw no! Both. They’re both. These questions are all both!
  3. Diamonds or leather.
    Cher: Oh leather.
  4. Neutrals or bold colors?
    Cher: I like the look of what it is. I don’t like color or I mean I don’t like bright colors but it’s the way it feels, the way it looks, like if you feel great in it. That’s the only thing that matters. Like, do you feel great in it?

    [In Shake Your Head, Darling (1982) Cher circles the answer B. “Bright colors, I love ’em” in question 7.
    [Well, it was the early 1980s.]