After a 31-year tenure on the Las Vegas strip, the performers from the revue Jubilee! took a final choreographed kick in 2016. The show, famous for its intricate costumes created by American fashion designer Bob Mackie, closed its doors due to dwindling audience numbers and critical reviewers who called it a spectacle “a relic of another era”.
Currently, almost a decade later, showgirls, or at least the showgirl style, is back.
The Sultan of Sequins
Referred to as the “master of glitz”, Mackie has made dramatic showgirl glitz his trademark look, clothing everyone from Marilyn Monroe to music superstars. Earlier this month, a “barely-there” bodysuit he created for Cher in 1978 commanded $57,600, well over its initial estimate, while a silver and gold tasseled bodysuit with lamé wings that Mackie crafted for Tina Turner for a 1977 concert sold for $19,200.
“In my view it looks more appealing for the emerging artists who is seeking something other than what they knew from childhood”, he told a publication. “New stars are striving for a show-stopping, more spectacular, attention-grabbing, entrance-making statement.”
A Mainstream Comeback
It’s a look that made its way all the way to the epicenter of mainstream fashion in 2025 largely due to a chart-topping superstar. Earlier this year, the entertainment titan wore one of Mackie’s classic Jubilee! costumes on the cover of her 12th studio album. The rhinestone encrusted bra and thong, plumed armbands and glittering headpiece were perfect for a record called The Life of a Showgirl.
She is part of a trend. This year, showgirl references have been adopted by singers including Sabrina Carpenter as they zoomed across arena stages in sparkles, cut-outs and ostrich feathers, highlighted against theatrical sets. A top stylist her creative director mentioned in an interview with a fashion magazine he wanted to bring “a showgirl attitude” to her Radical Optimism tour – drawing from pictures from the 1950s, her performers fluttered giant ostrich feather fans.
Drawing from the Past
These artists and other hitmakers also draw on classic entertainment forms, including vaudeville and dance line references. The outcome are poles apart from the late-century Britney Spears era of crop tops and utilitarian trousers, and urban dance moves that were popular earlier.
But some critics are on board with this glamour resurgence. Nancy Hardy, a former Jubilee! showgirl who performed in the 2000s says the trend is “confusing”. She thinks the word term is being “employed as an catch-all phrase covering everything from The Radio City Rockettes to Broadway performers and now even Taylor Swift.”
The Highly Sought-After Retro Look
For gen Z and millennial stars, Mackie’s classic designs have become incredibly sought-after. In 2024, a famous actress paid tribute to one of Mackie’s iconic muses, Cher, when the actress wore a semi-sheer sequined dress designed by the designer in 2001, which was inspired by one he created for Cher to wear in 1967. Months after, Miley Cyrus paid an private amount to buy the Mackie tasseled mini dress she had worn earlier in the year to perform at the Grammys. In September, Sabrina Carpenter wore a trio of vintage Mackie designs at the MTV Video Music Awards. They are also a popular item among collectors.
“This style evoke a sense of longing for a historical elegance,” says a historian, an expert at the University of Nevada, who researches the story of showgirls. “Currently it is seen as a sort of ‘acceptable’ appeal because it has been adapted. It has got all the elegance, the rhinestones and the glitter but without the exposure.”
A Than Simply Style: An Icon of Las Vegas
She says the showgirl image are key to the iconography of Vegas. She points to one-time leader Oscar Goodman who, during official events, was flanked by two showgirls. Although Las Vegas currently lacks any traditional showgirl productions, Chung says they are still used as an emblem of the city, showing up at gatherings and in marketing. “The showgirl is still a enduring symbol of Vegas spectacle,” she says.
An Appeal of Escape
The former showgirl says the complete change of a showgirl persona is part of the appeal. This is a notion Swift hints at in a recent documentary series that documents the behind-the-scenes action from her extensive 2023 Eras tour, which included exhausting preparations, workouts and 149 performances across 21 countries, each lasting 3.5 hours.
Hardy explains her own nights in the spotlight as “like completing an endurance race in stilettos every night”. Her headdress was 34lbs. “I had to support it all the way up the stairs to the stage from the green rooms three floors below in the basement. I had to start early for my entrance so I could recover before I went on stage. You are sweating the whole time but creating this fantasy that it’s easy and stunning and ethereal.”
It could be this is where the true allure of the showgirl really is found. In the busyness of 2025 there is a desire for a break from reality. Who better to look to than these performers, who have always personified make-believe, idealism and a realm where nobody misses a mark.
