Shake out your sequins for the “Rajah of Rhinestones,” costume designer Bob Mackie, who will be opening this year’s Sedona International Film Festival at the Sedona Performing Arts Center on Saturday, Feb. 22, as the star of a documentary covering his life and work: “Bob Mackie: Naked Illusion.”

“Matthew Miele, who has done several rather successful documentaries, came to me and said, ‘Would you be interested in me doing a documentary on you?’” Mackie recalled. “It never occurred to me to do that. I was always backstage, working on shows and things. I said, well, OK! It took a while. We showed the sizzle reel last time we were there in Sedona, and Patrick [Schweiss] said, ‘Why don’t you come back when you have it all finished?’ … Now we have a real film and we’ve been all over the country showing it.”

The documentary, which opens with Mackie teaching his great-granddaughters drawing tips, follows a career that began in 1961 and led to three Academy Award nominations, a Tony Award and nine Emmy Awards from 32 nominations, as well as costumes in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Smithsonian Institution.

“Sometimes I think, well, I should have gone straight to New York and just worked on the stage, but I loved working in the studios,” Mackie said. “It was just fun. Not silly fun, but just fun. Good work … I love the work. I love creating a character.”

“Naked Illusion” showcases some of his most notable costumes, along with tributes from the performers who wore them, including Pink, Miley Cyrus, Cher, Elton John, Carol Burnett, Tina Turner and Mitzi Gaynor, while the film’s title alludes to Mackie’s penchant for creations that use sheer fabrics and strategic sequins to leave the wearer seemingly nude or close to it.

“That just sort of happened,” Mackie said. “The Marilyn [Monroe] dress was first, because I had been working with Jean Louis. I did his sketches for him for a movie that was never finished with Marilyn. She was just a little flaky around the edges. They finally just let her go … but then she called Jean Louis and wanted a see-through kind of sexy dress to sing ‘Happy Birthday.’ At that point he was very well known for the way he dressed Marlene Dietrich in all of her concerts, which always had that sort of very sheer, glamorous look that she was known for. That goes way back into the early ’50s when she started doing Las Vegas.”

After sketching Monroe’s dress, Mackie put Mitzi Gaynor, Cher, Zendaya and others in similar creations over the years.

“You couldn’t see anything, you just thought you could,” Mackie says in the film. “That’s the way my dresses are.”

During the festival, Mackie will also introduce his friend and colleague Vicki Lawrence, who will be performing her solo show at SPAC following “Naked Illusion.”

“I’ve known her for so long, watched her turn from a little high school girl that Carol hired in the very first week we were on, years ago, and she just became this amazing character actress and comedy actress,” Mackie said. “Her ‘Mama’s Family’ show was a running sketch that they had on ‘The Carol Burnett Show.’ And then they put it on another night with a larger cast and rewrote it, but the characters are the same. And every week I got a credit for the costumes on a show that I wasn’t really working on, but at the time, they were all looking like I had done it, so it was kind of fun.”

Mackie is known for his role as costume designer for “The Carol Burnett Show,” for which he produced more than 16,000 costumes over 11 years.

“People got to know those characters, and they bring up those early sketches to me when I see them,” Mackie said. “They’re memorable in their minds, and I love that.”

One of the narrative threads in the second half of “Naked Illusion” follows Mackie’s creation of a new Abba-inspired costume for Cher for an upcoming Met Gala almost half a century after they titillated New York’s glitterati with a nearly-nude sequins-and-feathers dress he designed for her for the 1974 gala.

“I didn’t know what to expect when I first met her,” Mackie said of Cher, who became his best-known client. “She was that sort of goth, rock ’n’ roll-style girl with her husband Sonny. They dressed almost in cavemen clothes. And then she walked in for her first fitting on ‘The Carol Burnett Show,’ and she was adorable and young and vivacious, amazing, really. I thought, oh, we could do wonders with that girl.”

“The writers and producers didn’t know what to do with her,” Mackie added. “They said, ‘What is she going to play? She can’t be an Indian maiden every week.’ I said, she doesn’t ever have to be an Indian maiden, she can be anything you want. She can be the most famous women of history, she can do it all … It’s interesting when you meet an individual that you just know they were born to perform, they love doing it and it’s all they care about, really. Cher was like that. She loves performing.”

Mackie prefers to design for those who are driven to perform, which he said he finds “very inspiring.”

“Also that they love to dress up,” Mackie said. “You get someone who doesn’t care what they wear, you can’t help but lose interest a little bit. But these ladies, they just love it.”

“Before I work with anybody, I like to see some film on them, I like to go see them perform in person. I like to see how they walk, how they sit, how they sing, their attitude on stage,” Mackie said. “You can’t just dress people the same way everywhere you go. You have to look at them and what they’re known for.”

Mackie noted that audience response feeds back into the design process along with a client’s ideas, his ideas and the performance.

“I was trying to be visual entertainment for people that are performing, and that’s very important, especially on television,” Mackie said. “I love that sound of an audience when a star walks out and they’re dressed to the nines and the audience goes crazy … I love being in the audience when the audience responds to a visual they don’t expect..”

At age 85, Mackie is still creating for his favorites.

“I still do special things for different people,” Mackie said. “Lately, it’s so funny, some of the young kids — they used to be children working for Disney — have all grown up now and they’ve been looking on their phones just to see what was worn in the old days, and you start getting these calls about ‘Do you still have any of this?’ ‘Could we borrow that?’ Miley Cyrus is one of those girls, and Sabrina Carpenter, and Zendaya, who’s gorgeous, very Cher-like, actually, now that she’s a grownup. It’s so interesting how beautifully trained those children were. They know choreography, they know dance steps, they sing, they do everything. It’s like going to a college to be a star.”

One aspect of Mackie’s career only just mentioned in the documentary is his early work with storied Hollywood designer Edith Head, who has since been immortalized for a new generation as the character of Edna Mode in “The Incredibles.”

Given his enthusiasm for his work, Mackie is a performer too and admits to having enjoyed the attention.

“I got knocked off quite a bit while I was working every week all the time on several shows a week,” Mackie commented. “It’s very flattering. Sometimes you say, oh, why are they doing that, but you think about it and it’s nice.”

He expressed appreciation from audiences that have so far seen “Naked Illusion” and for the outgoing nature of SIFF audiences in particular.

“Even young costume designers come to these things often,” Mackie observed. “They want to be in that business. It’s so much fun to see these young kids. They get all dressed up and come to these screenings.” Often, he said, he can pick out the aspiring designers in the audience by their outfits: ‘They want to be noticed.’”

But does the youthful Mackie ever still get mistaken for a teenager, as he was for decades?

“Never anymore,” Mackie laughed. “Those days are long gone.”