🔗 Share this article

After a 31-year stint on the Las Vegas strip, the dancers from the revue Jubilee! executed their last synchronised kick in 2016. The show, known for its intricate costumes crafted by style icon Bob Mackie, ended its run due to falling audience numbers and critical reviewers who described it as a spectacle “a relic of another era”.

Today, nearly ten years later, showgirls, or at least the showgirl style, is back.

The King of Sparkle

Known as the “king of sparkle”, Mackie has made over-the-top showgirl glamour his trademark look, dressing everyone from Hollywood icons to music superstars. In a recent auction, a “naked” bodysuit he created for Cher in 1978 commanded $57,600, far exceeding its projected value, while a metallic beaded bodysuit with lamé wings that Mackie crafted for Tina Turner for a 1977 performance sold for $19,200.

“I believe it looks more attractive for the new generation of stars who is desiring something other than what they knew from childhood”, he told a publication. “Contemporary performers are embracing a show-stopping, more spectacular, attention-grabbing, grand statement.”

A Musical Revival

It’s a look that sashayed all the way to the centre of mainstream fashion in 2025 thanks to a chart-topping superstar. Recently, the entertainment titan wore one of Mackie’s original Jubilee! costumes on the cover of her 12th studio album. The rhinestone encrusted bra and thong, plumed armbands and shimmering headpiece were tailor-made for a record named The Life of a Showgirl.

The singer is part of a trend. This year, glamorous nods have been incorporated by music artists including Dua Lipa as they zoomed across arena stages in sparkles, strategic openings and ostrich feathers, illuminated against camp sets. Lipa’s stylist a fashion expert told Vogue he wanted to bring “a stage persona” to her Radical Optimism tour – drawing from pictures from the 1950s, Lipa’s dancers fluttered giant plumed accessories.

Pulling from the Past

Modern stars and other hitmakers also take inspiration from 19th-century entertainment forms, including classic theater and dance line references. The final look are worlds away from the 1990s era teen pop of crop tops and baggy pants, and urban dance moves that were popular earlier.

But some critics are enthusiastic with this showgirl revival. An ex-showgirl, a ex- Jubilee! showgirl who danced in the early 2000s says the trend is “puzzling”. She thinks the word showgirl title is being “employed as an catch-all phrase covering everything from The Radio City Rockettes to Broadway performers and now apparently modern pop stars.”

A Coveted Retro Look

For millennial and young adult stars, Mackie’s retro designs have become highly covetable. In 2024, a style icon paid tribute to one of Mackie’s earliest clients, Cher, when the actress wore a semi-sheer beaded dress made by the designer in 2001, which was reminiscent of one he designed for Cher to wear in 1967. Later that year, Miley Cyrus paid an private amount to buy the Mackie tasseled mini dress she had worn previously to perform at the Grammys. In September, Sabrina Carpenter wore a series of retro Mackie designs at the MTV Video Music Awards. They are also a popular item among vintage enthusiasts.

“The showgirl aesthetic evoke fond memories for a historical elegance,” says Su Kim Chung, an expert at the an academic institution, who studies the legacy of showgirls. “Now it is seen as a sort of ‘acceptable’ sexy because it has been adapted. It has got all the elegance, the sparkles and the glitter but without the bare skin.”

A Than Just Fashion: An Icon of Las Vegas

She says this figure are central to the iconography of Las Vegas. She points to ex-mayor Oscar Goodman who, during civic functions, was accompanied by two showgirls. While Las Vegas does not host any showgirl-based productions, Chung says they are still employed as an emblem of the city, appearing at gatherings and in promotional material. “The showgirl is still a lasting icon of Las Vegas glitz and glamour,” she says.

An Appeal of Illusion

Nancy Hardy says the magical transformation of a stage character is part of the appeal. This idea the singer references in a recent documentary series that shows the behind-the-scenes action from her extensive 2023 Eras tour, which included gruelling preparations, workouts and 149 shows across multiple nations, each lasting 3.5 hours.

The performer recalls her own stage routines as “comparable to completing an endurance race in high heels every night”. Her headdress weighed 34lbs. “I had to support it all the way up the staircase to the platform from the dressing rooms three floors below in the lower level. I had to head up ahead of time for my moment so I could rest before I went on stage. One is working hard the whole time but maintaining this image that it’s effortless and gorgeous and ethereal.”

It could be this is where the true allure of the showgirl really lies. In the chaos of 2025 there is a craving for a break from reality. Who better to turn to than such icons, who have always embodied make-believe, perfection and a realm where no one makes a mistake.