After a 31-year run on the iconic Vegas strip, the performers from the revue Jubilee! took a final choreographed kick in 2016. The show, renowned for its intricate costumes created by style icon Bob Mackie, closed its doors due to declining audience numbers and disappointed reviewers who labeled it a spectacle “stuck in the past”.
Today, nearly ten years later, the showgirl persona, or at least the showgirl aesthetic, is making a comeback.
The Master of Sparkle
Known as the “master of glitz”, Mackie has made theatrical showgirl glitz his trademark look, dressing everyone from Hollywood icons to music superstars. Recently, a “naked” bodysuit he designed for Cher in 1978 commanded $57,600, far exceeding its initial estimate, while a metallic tasseled bodysuit with lamé wings that Mackie designed for Tina Turner for a 1977 show sold for $19,200.
“I believe it looks more enticing for the younger performer who is desiring something other than what they knew from childhood”, he explained to a media outlet. “Today's artists are embracing a glamorous, more spectacular, breathtaking, grand statement.”
A Pop Culture Resurgence
It’s a look that glided all the way to the epicenter of the cultural zeitgeist in 2025 thanks to a global pop icon. In the past few months, the music phenomenon wore one of Mackie’s classic Jubilee! costumes on the cover of her new musical project. The crystal-covered bra and thong, plumed armbands and sparkly headpiece were ideal for a record called The Life of a Showgirl.
The singer isn't alone. This year, glamorous nods have been adopted by pop stars including Sabrina Carpenter as they danced across concert platforms in glitter, revealing designs and plumes, spotlighted against camp sets. Her fashion curator a fashion expert mentioned in an interview with a style publication he wanted to bring “a showgirl spirit” to her Radical Optimism tour – drawing from pictures from the mid-century, Lipa’s dancers fluttered giant ostrich feather fans.
Pulling from Tradition
Lipa, Carpenter and other hitmakers also draw on 19th-century entertainment forms, including vaudeville and chorus line references. The outcome are worlds away from the 1990s era Britney Spears era of revealing tops and baggy pants, and urban dance moves that came before them.
But not everyone are on board with this glamour resurgence. Nancy Hardy, a former Jubilee! showgirl who danced in the 2000s says the trend is “confusing”. She thinks the word term is being “employed as an broad label covering everything from The Radio City Rockettes to Broadway performers and now apparently modern pop stars.”
The Coveted Vintage Style
For millennial and young adult stars, Mackie’s classic designs have become highly covetable. In 2024, a style icon gave a nod to one of Mackie’s iconic muses, Cher, when the star wore a translucent 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 beaded mini dress she had worn previously to perform at the Grammys. In September, Sabrina Carpenter wore a series of classic Mackie designs at the MTV Video Music Awards. They are also a popular item among vintage enthusiasts.
“The showgirl aesthetic evoke a sense of longing for a bygone era of glitz,” says Su Kim Chung, a curator at the University of Nevada, who documents the history of showgirls. “Now it is seen as a sort of ‘toned-down’ appeal because it has been modified. It has got all the sophistication, the rhinestones and the shine but without the exposure.”
A Than Simply Style: An Icon of Vegas
She says the showgirl image 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 no longer has any showgirl-centric productions, the historian says they are still used as an symbol of the city, being present at corporate events and in promotional material. “The showgirl is still a remaining figure of Las Vegas spectacle,” the expert says.
The Allure of Escape
Hardy says the magical transformation of a showgirl is part of the attraction. It’s something Taylor Swift hints at in a recent docuseries that captures the behind-the-scenes action from her year-long 2023 Eras tour, which included exhausting practice sessions, training and 149 concerts across multiple nations, each going on for 3.5 hours.
She explains her own stage routines as “similar to completing an endurance race in stilettos every night”. Her headdress tipped the scales at 34lbs. “I had to wear it all the way up the steps to the platform from the backstage area three floors below in the basement. I had to head up ahead of time for my entrance so I could catch my breath before I made my entrance. You are perspiring the whole time but maintaining this fantasy that it’s easy and gorgeous and dreamlike.”
Maybe this is where the true allure of the showgirl fantasy really resides. In the complexity of 2025 there is a desire for escapism. What better figure to emulate than showgirls, who have always represented fantasy, perfection and a realm where no one falters.
