'Jaw-dropping': The moment Cher wore the ultimate 'revenge' outfit

At the Oscars 40 years ago, the US singer and actress Cher was snubbed by the Academy – and got even. The legendary outfit she wore on stage went down in history – and now "revenge dressing" has become a part of our celebrity culture.

Forty years ago almost to the day, Cher wore an outfit that has gone down in Oscars history as one of the most outrageous, inspired, extravagant – and iconic – looks to ever grace the red carpet and stage. 

It's a high bar, but Cher's showgirl-inspired outfit, which was the work of designer Bob Mackie, involved a theatrical, plumed mohawk of a headdress; a bare midriff framed by jagged hems above and below, almost like an open shark's jaw; beading and tassels. It might have been entirely black, but it was far from sombre. 

There were, Mackie has said in an interview with The New Yorker since, "a lot of people who said, 'That's not fashion!' And I said, 'Of course it's not fashion. It's a crazy get-up for attention'. And it did get attention – people talk about it still." In the years since it's been called many things, from legendary to "a bat-crazy mash-up of witchy showgirl and Halloween Big Bird".

Cher had been snubbed for her own award that night – as she explained in the 2024 documentary Bob Mackie: Naked Illusion: "I didn't get nominated for a movie that everyone thought I would actually win for [Mask] – so was dressing that night for a kind of revenge."

She was in fact there to award Don Ameche with a best supporting actor Oscar for his role in Cocoon, but who remembers that? Even Jane Fonda, who introduced Cher on to the stage, highlighted the seismic glamour that was about to explode into the proceedings, saying: "wait 'till you see what's going to come out here". Mackie recalled saying to Cher: 'Don't you think you'll be pulling focus from who you're presenting to?' And she said, 'Oh, they won't mind!'" 

As Cher took her place at the podium in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion of the Los Angeles Music Center, she quipped: "As you can see, I did receive my Academy booklet on how to dress like a serious actress."

As Josiah Howard, author of Cher: Strong Enough, tells the BBC, she was well aware that the way she dressed meant she fell foul of the archaic rules of the Academy. And, by dressing to shock, she was, in his view, saying, "let me give them even more of what they don't like about me… 'this is what you hate about me, and I'm going to tell you that I know you hate it about me, and I'm still going to give you it'."

Many people didn't even spot the detail that took things up another notch. According to Howard, she wore a blue contact lens in one of her brown eyes. "So she really was [saying] 'let me give you the freak show. Let me blow it way over the top for you'." It was, he says, "a wonderful moment for everybody who has a problem with how they're being seen, and knows they're being seen unfairly".

The whole look was brilliantly bold and courageous, especially given the fact that, as Howard points out, "[in] the '80s… women weren't standing up like that and she still wanted to continue to work in the industry… But she wanted that moment". Two years later she was awarded the best actress Oscar – beating Meryl Streep – for Moonstruck, and accepted the award in an only marginally less outrageous sheer gown with fringed bra.

Cher's famous 1986 Oscars look is often cited as an example of so-called revenge dressing. In fact, as Howard points out, "it wasn't the first time that Cher had dressed in a way that........

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