Following a 31-year stint on the Las Vegas strip, the performers from the production Jubilee! executed their last perfectly timed kick in 2016. The production, famous for its intricate costumes designed by style icon Bob Mackie, closed its doors due to falling audience numbers and unimpressed critics who called it a spectacle “stuck in the past”.
Currently, nearly ten years later, showgirls, or at least the glamorous showgirl look, is making a comeback.
The Master of Sparkle
Known as the “master of glitz”, Mackie has made dramatic stage sparkle his trademark look, clothing everyone from screen legends to Madonna. Recently, a “see-through” bodysuit he designed for Cher in 1978 fetched $57,600, far exceeding its initial estimate, while a shimmering fringed bodysuit with lamé wings that Mackie created for Tina Turner for a 1977 concert sold for $19,200.
“In my view it looks more enticing for the emerging artists who is desiring something other than what they knew from childhood”, he explained to a media outlet. “New stars are striving for a theatrical, more theatrical, breathtaking, grand statement.”
A Pop Culture Revival
It’s a look that glided all the way to the heart of mainstream fashion in 2025 propelled by a global pop icon. Earlier this year, the cultural juggernaut wore one of Mackie’s vintage Jubilee! costumes on the cover of her new musical project. The crystal-covered bra and thong, ostrich-feather armbands and sparkly headpiece were tailor-made for a record named The Life of a Showgirl.
Swift has company. This year, showgirl inspirations have been incorporated by music artists including Sabrina Carpenter as they whizzed across concert platforms in glitter, revealing designs and ostrich feathers, spotlighted against theatrical sets. A top stylist her creative director told a style publication he wanted to bring “a showgirl attitude” to her Radical Optimism tour – drawing from pictures from the 50s, her performers fluttered giant ostrich feather fans.
Drawing from History
Modern stars and other successful musicians also reference 19th-century performances, including vaudeville and dance line references. The results are poles apart from the 1990s era pop style of short shirts and baggy pants, and urban dance moves that came before them.
But certain observers are convinced with this showgirl revival. An ex-showgirl, a ex- Jubilee! showgirl who performed in the 00s says the trend is “puzzling”. She thinks the word term is being “treated as an umbrella term covering everything from The Radio City Rockettes to Broadway performers and now even Taylor Swift.”
The Highly Sought-After Vintage Style
For younger and millennial stars, Mackie’s retro designs have become highly covetable. In 2024, a style icon paid tribute to one of Mackie’s earliest clients, Cher, when the actor wore a see-through beaded dress created by the designer in 2001, which was reminiscent of one he made for Cher to wear in 1967. Subsequently, a singer paid an significant price to buy the Mackie tasseled mini dress she had worn previously to perform at the Grammys. In September, Sabrina Carpenter wore a trio of retro Mackie designs at the MTV Video Music Awards. They are also a favorite among collectors.
“This style inspire a sense of longing for a past glamour,” says an archivist, a curator at the an academic institution, who studies the legacy of showgirls. “Today it is considered a sort of ‘toned-down’ sexy because it has been updated. It has got all the sophistication, the rhinestones and the shine but without the exposure.”
More Than Simply Fashion: An Symbol of the City
Chung says showgirls are central to the iconography of Las Vegas. She points to former mayor Oscar Goodman who, during public appearances, was surrounded by two showgirls. While Las Vegas does not host any showgirl-based productions, Jung says they are still employed as an emblem of the city, appearing at conventions and in advertisements. “The showgirl is still a remaining icon of Las Vegas spectacle,” Chung says.
The Allure of Escape
Nancy Hardy says the complete change of a stage character is part of the attraction. This idea the singer references in a recent documentary series that captures the off-camera action from her year-long 2023 Eras tour, which included gruelling practice sessions, gym sessions and countless concerts across multiple nations, each lasting 3.5 hours.
She describes her own nights in the spotlight as “similar to extreme physical exertion in heels every night”. Her headpiece tipped the scales at 34lbs. “I had to support it all the way up the staircase to the performance area from the backstage area three floors below in the lower level. I had to start early for my moment so I could recover before I performed. You’re sweating the whole time but creating this fantasy that it’s effortless and stunning and dreamlike.”
Maybe this is where the true allure of the showgirl really resides. In the complexity of 2025 there is a longing for escapism. Who better to look to than showgirls, who have always embodied make-believe, idealism and a universe where no one misses a mark.
