After a 31-year tenure on the Las Vegas strip, the performers from the production Jubilee! took a final perfectly timed kick in 2016. The extravaganza, famous for its elaborate costumes designed by American fashion designer Bob Mackie, ended its run due to declining audience numbers and disappointed critics who labeled it a spectacle “stuck in the past”.
Today, almost a decade later, the showgirl persona, or at least the glamorous showgirl look, is back.
The King of Glitz
Known as the “king of sparkle”, Mackie has made dramatic stage sparkle his defining aesthetic, outfitting everyone from Hollywood icons to music superstars. Earlier this month, a “see-through” bodysuit he made for Cher in 1978 fetched $57,600, seven times its estimated price, while a metallic tasseled bodysuit with lamé wings that Mackie created for Tina Turner for a 1977 show sold for $19,200.
“I believe it looks more attractive for the emerging artists who is seeking something other than what they knew from childhood”, he explained to a media outlet. “New stars are pushing toward a theatrical, more dramatic, attention-grabbing, memorable statement.”
The Pop Culture Resurgence
It’s a look that made its way all the way to the heart of popular culture in 2025 thanks to a chart-topping superstar. In the past few months, the music phenomenon wore one of Mackie’s original Jubilee! costumes on the cover of her 12th studio album. The bedazzled bra and thong, feathered armbands and shimmering headpiece were ideal for a record named The Life of a Showgirl.
The singer has company. This year, showgirl references have been embraced by music artists including Miley Cyrus as they whizzed across concert platforms in glitter, cut-outs and feathers, illuminated against theatrical sets. A top stylist a fashion expert mentioned in an interview with Vogue he wanted to bring “a stage persona” to her Radical Optimism tour – inspired by pictures from the mid-century, the backup dancers waved giant feathered fans.
Pulling from the Past
Lipa, Carpenter and other successful musicians also draw on classic entertainment forms, including vaudeville and ensemble references. The results are poles apart from the 1990s era pop style of crop tops and utilitarian trousers, and urban dance moves that were popular earlier.
But not everyone are convinced with this showgirl renaissance. Nancy Hardy, a ex- Jubilee! showgirl who danced in the 00s says the trend is “puzzling”. She thinks the word showgirl title is being “used as an umbrella term including everything from The Radio City Rockettes to Broadway performers and now seemingly Taylor Swift.”
The Coveted Vintage Style
For gen Z and modern stars, Mackie’s classic designs have become highly covetable. In 2024, Zendaya gave a nod to one of Mackie’s earliest clients, Cher, when the actor wore a semi-sheer beaded dress made by the designer in 2001, which was inspired by one he created for Cher to wear in 1967. Subsequently, Miley Cyrus paid an undisclosed sum 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 series of vintage Mackie designs at the MTV Video Music Awards. They are also a hit among collectors.
“This style bring about nostalgia for a historical elegance,” says a historian, a curator at the a Las Vegas university, who studies the story of showgirls. “Now it is viewed as a sort of ‘toned-down’ sexy because it has been adapted. It has got all the glamour, the rhinestones and the glitter but without the nudity.”
More Than Just Fashion: An Symbol of the City
She says this figure are integral to the iconography of Vegas. She points to ex-mayor Oscar Goodman who, during civic functions, was flanked by two showgirls. Although Las Vegas no longer has any showgirl-based productions, Chung says they are still employed as an logo of the city, being present at gatherings and in marketing. “The showgirl is still a enduring figure of Vegas spectacle,” Chung says.
The Allure of Illusion
Nancy Hardy says the transformative effect of a stage character is part of the attraction. This is a notion the singer references in a latest documentary series that shows the backstage action from her extensive 2023 Eras tour, which included exhausting rehearsals, workouts and numerous performances across dozens of cities, each lasting 3.5 hours.
The performer describes her own nights in the spotlight as “similar to extreme physical exertion in high heels every night”. Her feathered headdress weighed 34lbs. “I had to support it all the way up the staircase to the platform from the backstage area three floors below in the lower level. I had to leave early for my moment so I could recover before I performed. You’re perspiring the whole time but creating this image that it’s effortless and stunning and magical.”
Perhaps this is where the fascination of the showgirl really resides. In the complexity of 2025 there is a longing for fantasy. Who better to look to than these performers, who have always represented fantasy, flawlessness and a world where no one misses a mark.
