After a 31-year tenure on the iconic Vegas strip, the performers from the revue Jubilee! took a final choreographed kick in 2016. The production, famous for its intricate costumes created by style icon Bob Mackie, came to an end due to falling audience numbers and unimpressed reviewers who described it as a spectacle “a relic of another era”.
Currently, roughly eight years later, the showgirl, or at least the showgirl aesthetic, is back.
A Sultan of Sequins
Dubbed the “master of glitz”, Mackie has made dramatic stage sparkle his defining aesthetic, dressing everyone from Marilyn Monroe to music superstars. In a recent auction, a “barely-there” bodysuit he designed for Cher in 1978 sold for $57,600, well over its estimated price, while a shimmering fringed bodysuit with lamé wings that Mackie designed for Tina Turner for a 1977 performance sold for $19,200.
“In my view it looks more appealing for the younger performer who is seeking something other than what they grew up with”, he stated in an interview with a media outlet. “Today's artists are striving for a show-stopping, more spectacular, show-stopping, entrance-making statement.”
The Mainstream Resurgence
It’s a look that sashayed all the way to the epicenter of popular culture in 2025 thanks to a global pop icon. Recently, the entertainment titan wore one of Mackie’s original Jubilee! costumes on the cover of her new musical project. The rhinestone encrusted bra and thong, plumed armbands and shimmering headpiece were perfect for a record titled The Life of a Showgirl.
Swift has company. This year, showgirl inspirations have been adopted by music artists including Miley Cyrus as they danced across concert platforms in glitter, revealing designs and plumes, highlighted against theatrical sets. Lipa’s stylist her creative director told a fashion magazine he wanted to bring “a stage persona” to her Radical Optimism tour – referencing pictures from the 1950s, her performers waved giant plumed accessories.
Drawing from History
Lipa, Carpenter and other chart toppers also take inspiration from classic entertainment forms, including burlesque and chorus line references. The outcome are poles apart from the 1990s era pop style of revealing tops and baggy pants, and hip-hop inspired dance moves that were popular earlier.
But some critics are on board with this glamour resurgence. Nancy Hardy, a former Jubilee! showgirl who entertained in the 00s says the trend is “bemusing”. She thinks the word term is being “employed as an broad label encompassing everything from The Radio City Rockettes to Broadway performers and now apparently Taylor Swift.”
A Highly Sought-After Retro Look
For millennial and millennial stars, Mackie’s retro designs have become highly covetable. In 2024, Zendaya honored to one of Mackie’s iconic muses, Cher, when the actor wore a semi-sheer beaded dress made by the designer in 2001, which was reminiscent of one he made for Cher to wear in 1967. Months after, Miley Cyrus paid an undisclosed sum to buy the Mackie beaded mini dress she had worn at an awards show to perform at the Grammys. In September, Carpenter wore a series of classic Mackie designs at the MTV Video Music Awards. They are also a hit among vintage enthusiasts.
“This style inspire nostalgia for a bygone era of glitz,” says a historian, head of special collections at the an academic institution, who studies the legacy of showgirls. “Today it is considered a sort of ‘toned-down’ allure because it has been adapted. It has got all the sophistication, the rhinestones and the glitter but without the bare skin.”
More Than Just Style: An Icon of Vegas
Chung says the showgirl image are central to the identity of Sin City. She points to one-time leader Oscar Goodman who, during public appearances, was accompanied by two showgirls. Although Las Vegas does not host any showgirl-centric productions, the historian says they are still used as an logo of the city, being present at corporate events and in advertisements. “The showgirl is still a lasting figure of Vegas glamour,” she says.
The Allure of Illusion
Hardy says the complete change of a showgirl persona is part of the allure. This is a notion Taylor Swift alludes to in a latest behind-the-scenes film that shows the backstage action from her massive 2023 Eras tour, which included intense preparations, workouts and countless shows across 21 countries, each running for 3.5 hours.
Hardy explains her own showgirl performances as “comparable to running a marathon in stilettos every night”. Her feathered headdress tipped the scales at 34lbs. “I had to carry it all the way up the stairs to the stage from the green rooms three floors below in the basement. I had to head up ahead of time for my moment so I could recover before I made my entrance. You are sweating the whole time but creating this image that it’s easy and beautiful and magical.”
Perhaps this is where the appeal of the showgirl fantasy really is found. In the busyness of 2025 there is a desire for fantasy. Who better to turn to than showgirls, who have always represented make-believe, idealism and a universe where nobody falters.
