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After a long-running tenure on the Las Vegas Boulevard, the performers from the production Jubilee! executed their last perfectly timed kick in 2016. The show, famous for its elaborate costumes created by style icon Bob Mackie, closed its doors due to falling audience numbers and disappointed critics who labeled it a spectacle “a relic of another era”.

Today, almost a decade later, the showgirl persona, or at least the glamorous showgirl look, is experiencing a revival.

The Master of Sparkle

Dubbed the “master of glitz”, Mackie has made dramatic stage sparkle his signature style, clothing everyone from Hollywood icons to Madonna. In a recent auction, a “naked” bodysuit he made for Cher in 1978 fetched $57,600, well over its estimated price, while a shimmering fringed bodysuit with reflective wings that Mackie crafted for Tina Turner for a 1977 show sold for $19,200.

“I think it looks more attractive for the younger performer who is desiring something other than what they were accustomed to”, he stated in an interview with a newspaper. “Contemporary performers are striving for a glamorous, more spectacular, show-stopping, entrance-making statement.”

The Pop Culture Revival

It’s a look that glided all the way to the centre of the cultural zeitgeist in 2025 largely due to a global pop icon. Earlier this year, the music phenomenon 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 glittering headpiece were ideal for a record named The Life of a Showgirl.

She is part of a trend. This year, glamorous nods have been incorporated by music artists including Sabrina Carpenter as they zoomed across world tours in glitter, revealing designs and plumes, spotlighted against theatrical sets. Her fashion curator her creative director explained to Vogue he wanted to bring “a stage persona” to her Radical Optimism tour – referencing pictures from the 1950s, Lipa’s dancers fluttered giant plumed accessories.

Pulling from the Past

These artists and other chart toppers also draw on 19th-century performances, including vaudeville and chorus line references. The results are vastly different from the 1990s era Britney Spears era of short shirts and utilitarian trousers, and urban dance moves that preceded this trend.

But certain observers are convinced with this glamour resurgence. A former performer, a former Jubilee! showgirl who entertained in the 2000s says the trend is “bemusing”. She thinks the word showgirl title is being “treated as an catch-all phrase covering everything from The Radio City Rockettes to Broadway performers and now even Taylor Swift.”

The Highly Sought-After Retro Look

For gen Z and modern stars, Mackie’s classic designs have become highly covetable. In 2024, a famous actress honored to one of Mackie’s first major stars, Cher, when the actress wore a translucent embellished dress designed by the designer in 2001, which was reminiscent of one he created for Cher to wear in 1967. Subsequently, another pop star 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 classic Mackie designs at the MTV Video Music Awards. They are also a popular item among fashion collectors.

“Showgirls bring about nostalgia for a historical elegance,” says an archivist, an expert at the a Las Vegas university, who studies the legacy of showgirls. “Now it is considered a sort of ‘acceptable’ allure because it has been adapted. It has got all the sophistication, the crystals and the glitter but without the nudity.”

More Than Just Fashion: An Symbol of the City

The expert says the showgirl image are central to the identity of Vegas. She points to ex-mayor Oscar Goodman who, during civic functions, was flanked by two showgirls. While Las Vegas no longer has any traditional showgirl productions, the historian says they are still featured as an symbol of the city, being present at corporate events and in advertisements. “The showgirl is still a enduring figure of Las Vegas spectacle,” Chung says.

The Allure of Illusion

The former showgirl says the transformative effect of a showgirl is part of the appeal. It’s something the singer hints at in a new documentary series that shows the off-camera action from her massive 2023 Eras tour, which included gruelling rehearsals, workouts and countless shows across multiple nations, each going on for 3.5 hours.

Hardy explains her own nights in the spotlight as “like running a marathon in stilettos every night”. Her feathered headdress weighed 34lbs. “I had to wear it all the way up the steps to the performance area from the backstage area three floors below in the basement. I had to start early for my cue so I could rest before I made my entrance. One is sweating the whole time but maintaining this image that it’s effortless and gorgeous and ethereal.”

Perhaps this is where the fascination of the showgirl fantasy really lies. In the chaos of 2025 there is a longing for fantasy. What better figure to emulate than these performers, who have always embodied make-believe, perfection and a universe where no one misses a mark.