Ariana Grande’s Vintage Bob Mackie Is No Laughing Matter

Ariana Grande has wrapped up her Wicked: For Good press tour, but her penchant for dressing from the archive remains. Her latest vintage grail? An oh-so ’70s dress designed by fashion royalty for comedy royalty.

In the promo clip for her appearance on Saturday Night Live this weekend, Grande wore a chevron striped dress by Bob Mackie. It featured a halter neckline and a matching shawl detail that draped over the singer’s arms.

While numerous stars have worn Mackie’s vintage designs of late, they usually pull looks originally designed for his pop star clients like Cher, Diana Ross, or Madonna. Grande’s dress was different. Mackie originally created the tri-color number for Carol Burnett to wear during the opening monologue of a 1973 episode of her show, The Carol Burnett Show.

Mackie designed all the outfits for both Burnett and her performers, which the actor estimates to have been nearly 17,000 outfits over the course of its eleven seasons on air. “There are fashion designers, but they can’t do costumes,” Burnett said in 2003. “And then there are costume designers that don’t do fashion. But Bob does it all. He’s the whole ball of wax.”

Grande’s vintage pull, coordinated by her stylist Law Roach, was special on two fronts. She’s hosting SNL (for her third time) with Cher as a musical guest. Cher, of course, was one of Mackie’s foremost muses throughout the ’70s and ’80s, having created countless looks for the singer, including that infamous 1988 Oscars dress. To make Grande’s vintage moment even more fitting, Cher and Mackie actually met on The Carol Burnett show in 1967. Mackie then ended up doing all the costumes for Cher’s self-titled variety show, too.

But the dress also marks a new era in Grande’s career. She’s pivoting away from music (she recently hinted at a significant break after her 2026 Eternal Sunshine tour) to focus on her work as a comedic actor. After her turn as Glinda in Wicked, Grande stars next in Focker In-Law, the latest addition to the Meet the Parents franchise, which comes out in November 2026.

If clothes can carry history, this one surely will provide Grande with a good amount of comedic karma.