🔗 Share this article

After a three-decade run on the Las Vegas strip, the performers from the production Jubilee! executed their last synchronised kick in 2016. The production, renowned for its intricate costumes created by style icon Bob Mackie, ended its run due to declining audience numbers and unimpressed critics who called it a spectacle “a relic of another era”.

Currently, roughly eight years later, the showgirl persona, or at least the glamorous showgirl look, is back.

A Master of Glitz

Referred to as the “king of sparkle”, Mackie has made over-the-top showgirl glamour his signature style, dressing everyone from screen legends to pop royalty. Recently, a “naked” bodysuit he designed for Cher in 1978 commanded $57,600, well over its initial estimate, while a metallic beaded bodysuit with shiny wings that Mackie crafted for Tina Turner for a 1977 concert sold for $19,200.

“In my view 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 publication. “Contemporary performers are striving for a theatrical, more dramatic, show-stopping, grand statement.”

A Mainstream Comeback

It’s a look that glided all the way to the centre of the cultural zeitgeist in 2025 thanks to a chart-topping superstar. Recently, the music phenomenon wore one of Mackie’s classic Jubilee! costumes on the cover of her new musical project. The rhinestone encrusted bra and thong, plumed armbands and shimmering headpiece were tailor-made for a record titled The Life of a Showgirl.

She has company. This year, showgirl references have been adopted by singers including Sabrina Carpenter as they whizzed across arena stages in glitter, revealing designs and ostrich feathers, highlighted against camp sets. A top stylist Lorenzo Posocco told Vogue he wanted to bring “a showgirl spirit” to her Radical Optimism tour – inspired by pictures from the mid-century, her performers wafted giant feathered fans.

Drawing from Tradition

These artists and other chart toppers also draw on 19th-century performances, including burlesque and ensemble references. The results are vastly different from the 1990s era Britney Spears era of revealing tops and cargo pants, and urban dance moves that came before them.

But certain observers are on board with this glamour resurgence. An ex-showgirl, a ex- Jubilee! showgirl who danced in the early 2000s says the trend is “bemusing”. She thinks the word showgirl is being “used as an broad label including everything from The Radio City Rockettes to Broadway performers and now apparently today's icons.”

The Highly Sought-After Retro Look

For millennial and young adult stars, Mackie’s classic designs have become extremely desirable. In 2024, a famous actress honored to one of Mackie’s first major stars, Cher, when the actress wore a semi-sheer embellished dress created by the designer in 2001, which was reminiscent of one he created for Cher to wear in 1967. Months after, a singer 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, the singer wore a series of vintage Mackie designs at the MTV Video Music Awards. They are also a hit among vintage enthusiasts.

“The showgirl aesthetic inspire nostalgia for a historical elegance,” says an archivist, an expert at the an academic institution, who documents the story of showgirls. “Today it is viewed as a sort of ‘safe’ allure because it has been adapted. It has got all the glamour, the rhinestones and the glitter but without the bare skin.”

A Than Simply Fashion: An Symbol of Vegas

Chung says the showgirl image are key to the iconography of Vegas. She points to ex-mayor Oscar Goodman who, during public appearances, was flanked by two showgirls. While Las Vegas no longer has any showgirl-centric productions, Chung says they are still employed as an symbol of the city, being present at corporate events and in marketing. “The showgirl is still a enduring figure of Vegas spectacle,” Chung says.

The Allure of Illusion

Hardy says the transformative effect of a showgirl is part of the allure. This idea Swift hints at in a recent documentary series that shows the backstage action from her year-long 2023 Eras tour, which included exhausting rehearsals, workouts and 149 shows across 21 countries, each running for 3.5 hours.

The performer explains her own showgirl performances as “similar to extreme physical exertion in heels every night”. Her headdress weighed 34lbs. “I had to support 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 moment so I could rest before I made my entrance. One is perspiring the whole time but creating this fantasy that it’s easy and beautiful and ethereal.”

Maybe this is where the appeal of the showgirl fantasy really resides. In the complexity of 2025 there is a desire for a break from reality. What better figure to emulate than showgirls, who have always represented make-believe, perfection and a realm where nobody misses a mark.