After a 31-year run on the Las Vegas strip, the performers from the spectacle Jubilee! gave one last synchronised kick in 2016. The production, famous for its intricate costumes crafted by American fashion designer Bob Mackie, closed its doors due to falling audience numbers and disappointed commentators who called it a spectacle “a relic of another era”.
Now, roughly eight years later, the showgirl, or at least the showgirl aesthetic, is experiencing a revival.
A Master of Glitz
Dubbed the “master of glitz”, Mackie has made over-the-top showgirl glamour his signature style, dressing everyone from Hollywood icons to Madonna. In a recent auction, a “naked” bodysuit he designed for Cher in 1978 fetched $57,600, well over its estimated price, while a silver and gold tasseled bodysuit with lamé wings that Mackie crafted for Tina Turner for a 1977 concert sold for $19,200.
“I think it looks more attractive for the emerging artists who is looking for something other than what they knew from childhood”, he told a newspaper. “Contemporary performers are pushing toward a show-stopping, more dramatic, attention-grabbing, grand statement.”
A Musical Comeback
It’s a look that sashayed all the way to the centre of mainstream fashion in 2025 propelled by Taylor Swift. In the past few months, the music phenomenon wore one of Mackie’s original Jubilee! costumes on the cover of her new musical project. The bedazzled bra and thong, ostrich-feather armbands and glittering headpiece were ideal for a record named The Life of a Showgirl.
The singer is part of a trend. This year, showgirl references have been incorporated by music artists including Miley Cyrus as they whizzed across world tours in glitter, revealing designs and feathers, highlighted against camp sets. Her fashion curator 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, the backup dancers waved giant plumed accessories.
Drawing from History
Lipa, Carpenter and other hitmakers also draw on 19th-century entertainment forms, including burlesque and chorus line references. The final look are vastly different from the 1990s era pop style of crop tops and cargo pants, and urban dance moves that preceded this trend.
But some critics are enthusiastic with this glamour resurgence. A former performer, a one-time Jubilee! showgirl who entertained in the early 2000s says the trend is “puzzling”. She thinks the word showgirl is being “employed as an umbrella term encompassing everything from The Radio City Rockettes to Broadway performers and now even modern pop stars.”
The Coveted Retro Style
For gen Z and young adult stars, Mackie’s retro designs have become highly covetable. In 2024, a famous actress honored to one of Mackie’s iconic muses, Cher, when the actress wore a semi-sheer embellished dress designed by the designer in 2001, which was reminiscent of one he designed for Cher to wear in 1967. Months after, a singer paid an significant price to buy the Mackie fringed mini dress she had worn previously to perform at the Grammys. In September, Sabrina Carpenter wore a trio of classic Mackie designs at the MTV Video Music Awards. They are also a hit among collectors.
“Showgirls inspire fond memories for a bygone era of glitz,” says an archivist, head of special collections at the a Las Vegas university, who studies the history of showgirls. “Today it is seen as a sort of ‘acceptable’ sexy because it has been updated. It has got all the glamour, the sparkles and the sparkle but without the exposure.”
More Than Simply Style: An Icon of Las Vegas
She says this figure are central to the iconography of Sin City. She points to one-time leader Oscar Goodman who, during civic functions, was accompanied by two showgirls. While Las Vegas no longer has any traditional showgirl productions, the historian says they are still employed as an logo of the city, being present at corporate events and in marketing. “The showgirl is still a lasting icon of Las Vegas glamour,” Chung says.
The Appeal of Transformation
The former showgirl says the complete change of a stage character is part of the attraction. This is a notion Swift references in a latest behind-the-scenes film that documents the off-camera action from her massive 2023 Eras tour, which included gruelling practice sessions, workouts and numerous concerts across 21 countries, each going on for 3.5 hours.
She explains her own stage routines as “comparable to completing an endurance race in high heels every night”. Her headdress tipped the scales at 34lbs. “I had to wear it all the way up the steps to the performance area from the green rooms three floors below in the basement. I had to leave early for my cue so I could recover before I went on stage. One is working hard the whole time but creating this illusion that it’s effortless and stunning and ethereal.”
Maybe this is where the appeal of the showgirl fantasy really resides. In the busyness of 2025 there is a desire for a break from reality. Who better to look to than such icons, who have always embodied dreams, idealism and a realm where no one misses a mark.
