Music Legend, 80, Reveals Illegal Secret Behind Infamous Naked Dress

Harry Langdon / Getty Images Cher’s barely-there Met Gala dress had a secret hiding in plain sight.

The 80-year-old singer revisited the surreal Bob Mackie gown she wore to the 1974 Met Gala in an interview with Vogue published Thursday, and shared a surprising detail about its construction.

“The secret of the dress that people don’t know is that it was made out of a material that was illegal in America, called soufflé,” she said.

The ultra-fine, transparent silk fabric gave the illusion that Cher was wearing little more than beads and feathers.

But the delicate material also comes with a caveat.

The fabric is extremely flammable, failing to meet U.S. textile safety standards.

Mackie previously revealed that the same material was used for Marilyn Monroe’s famous “Happy Birthday, Mr.

President” dress, another of the few gowns made with the fragile material.

The dress came with another unexpected connection: Hollywood legend Marlene Dietrich.

Cher recalled arriving for a fitting and noticing a woman in a nearby kitchen pulling things out of a refrigerator and tossing them into the trash.

“I had no idea what she was doing,” she told Vogue .

“So I was like, ‘Bob, who is that?’ And he was like, ‘That’s Marlene Dietrich!’” Dietrich, she learned, had brought the fabric used to make the gown.

The striking design featured shimmering embroidery over nearly invisible silk, with white feathers running along its long sleeves and hem.

Cher wore the gown to her first Met Gala, arriving on Mackie’s arm and leaving photographers scrambling to capture the revealing look.