A STITCH IN TIME?

Celebrity costumer Bob Mackie's finances are apparently growing a bit threadbare. The creator of outrageously ornate rags for clients including Cher, Pia Zadora and Carol Burnett is, according to sources, under increasing financial heat, with outstanding debts of "six figures" each to Cher and Zadora.

Ray Aghayan, president of Bob Mackie Originals, acknowledges that "business is very tight" and does allow that Cher "has on occasion helped" by way of loans.

Aghayan adds that Mackie, 52, has reduced his overhead in Los Angeles and predicts that "by the first of the year, the bulk of our business will be done out of New York." Yet with network economics all but ruling out elaborately produced variety shows, Aghayan qualifies his optimism about the company's future. "Our costume business may get smaller," he says, "but I promise you, we are not going to disappear."

BRIEF SUCCESS
On another fashion front, rapper Marky Mark, famous for dropping trou during his concerts, is being paid $100,000 to endorse two Calvin Klein lines: jeans and, natch, underwear. A source close to Mark says that in return for the hundred big ones, Mark will appear in "one Calvin Klein commercial and a series of print ads."

WHEN'S THE VIDEO?

The London band House of Windsor is rushing out a techno-pop single titled "Squidgy." HOW laid down the dance beat, then added vocals by "sampling," suggestively and out of context, the voices of Princess Diana and her pal James Gilbey from the now infamous cellular-phone tape.

Di's contribution? "I love it, I love it, I've never had it before!"

Gilbey's response?

"Oh, Squidgy, Squidgy, Squidgy!"

Says a spokesman for the record company: "We did it for laughs, but we now expect it to go straight into the charts as No. 1."

WHAT'S LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT?

TV director Brian Gibson has signed with Touchstone Pictures to do a theatrical bioflick on Tina Turner. A spokesperson for the singer, 52, confirms that "discussions are under way for Tina to play herself at some point in her life." But not, presumably, during the years with Ike Turner, whom she married in her early 20s.

Ironically, in 1990, Gibson worked with an ideal candidate for a younger Tina: Lynn Whitfield, 38, whom he directed in the cable movie The Josephine Baker Story. The two married after that movie wrapped and have a child, Grace, now 1. But they recently separated, making it unlikely that Whitfield will he considered.

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