After a long-running run on the Las Vegas Boulevard, the dancers from the production Jubilee! executed their last choreographed kick in 2016. The production, renowned for its intricate costumes crafted by celebrated designer Bob Mackie, came to an end due to dwindling audience numbers and unimpressed critics who labeled it a spectacle “trapped in time”.
Currently, roughly eight years later, showgirls, or at least the showgirl style, is making a comeback.
The Master of Sparkle
Known as the “king of sparkle”, Mackie has made dramatic showgirl glitz his defining aesthetic, clothing everyone from Marilyn Monroe to Madonna. Earlier this month, a “see-through” bodysuit he made for Cher in 1978 sold for $57,600, well over its projected value, while a shimmering fringed bodysuit with shiny wings that Mackie designed for Tina Turner for a 1977 show sold for $19,200.
“I believe it looks more enticing for the emerging artists who is looking for something other than what they grew up with”, he stated in an interview with a media outlet. “New stars are embracing a show-stopping, more theatrical, attention-grabbing, entrance-making statement.”
A Pop Culture Resurgence
It’s a look that made its way all the way to the heart of mainstream fashion in 2025 propelled by a chart-topping superstar. In the past few months, the music phenomenon wore one of Mackie’s original Jubilee! costumes on the cover of her 12th studio album. The rhinestone encrusted bra and thong, plumed armbands and sparkly headpiece were perfect for a record called The Life of a Showgirl.
The singer isn't alone. This year, showgirl inspirations have been embraced by music artists including Dua Lipa as they whizzed across concert platforms in sparkles, revealing designs and plumes, illuminated against overstated sets. A top stylist Lorenzo Posocco told Vogue he wanted to bring “a showgirl attitude” to her Radical Optimism tour – inspired by pictures from the mid-century, her performers waved giant plumed accessories.
Pulling from Tradition
These artists and other hitmakers also draw on classic entertainment forms, including vaudeville and ensemble references. The results are vastly different from the late-century pop style of revealing tops and cargo pants, and urban dance moves that were popular earlier.
But some critics are enthusiastic with this glamour resurgence. Nancy Hardy, a ex- Jubilee! showgirl who danced in the early 2000s says the trend is “bemusing”. She thinks the word showgirl is being “treated as an broad label encompassing everything from The Radio City Rockettes to Broadway performers and now even Taylor Swift.”
A Coveted Vintage Look
For millennial and young adult stars, Mackie’s classic designs have become highly covetable. In 2024, a famous actress paid tribute to one of Mackie’s iconic muses, Cher, when the actress wore a translucent embellished dress designed by the designer in 2001, which was reminiscent of one he created for Cher to wear in 1967. Months after, another pop star paid an undisclosed sum to buy the Mackie beaded mini dress she had worn previously to perform at the Grammys. In September, the singer wore a collection of classic Mackie designs at the MTV Video Music Awards. They are also a hit among collectors.
“This style bring about fond memories for a bygone era of glitz,” says a historian, an expert at the a Las Vegas university, who documents the story of showgirls. “Now it is viewed as a sort of ‘acceptable’ appeal because it has been adapted. It has got all the elegance, the rhinestones and the shine but without the nudity.”
More Than Just Fashion: An Symbol of Vegas
She says the showgirl image are integral to the imagery of Vegas. She points to one-time leader Oscar Goodman who, during public appearances, was flanked by two showgirls. While Las Vegas does not host any showgirl-based productions, the historian says they are still employed as an logo of the city, appearing at corporate events and in advertisements. “The showgirl is still a lasting figure of Vegas spectacle,” the expert says.
An Appeal of Transformation
Hardy says the complete change of a showgirl is part of the allure. This idea Taylor Swift hints at in a latest documentary series that shows the backstage action from her year-long 2023 Eras tour, which included exhausting practice sessions, gym sessions and 149 concerts across multiple nations, each going on for 3.5 hours.
Hardy recalls her own showgirl performances as “comparable to extreme physical exertion in stilettos every night”. Her headpiece weighed 34lbs. “I had to wear it all the way up the steps to the stage from the dressing rooms three floors below in the basement. I had to head up ahead of time for my entrance so I could catch my breath before I went on stage. You’re perspiring the whole time but creating this image that it’s simple and beautiful and dreamlike.”
It could be this is where the appeal of the showgirl really is found. In the busyness of 2025 there is a craving for escapism. What better figure to emulate than showgirls, who have always embodied make-believe, flawlessness and a realm where no one falters.
