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Following a 31-year tenure on the iconic Vegas strip, the performers from the production Jubilee! took a final perfectly timed kick in 2016. The show, famous for its intricate costumes created by style icon Bob Mackie, came to an end due to falling audience numbers and critical critics who labeled it a spectacle “trapped in time”.

Currently, almost a decade later, the showgirl, or at least the showgirl style, is making a comeback.

A Master of Sequins

Dubbed the “master of glitz”, Mackie has made dramatic showgirl glamour his trademark look, clothing everyone from Marilyn Monroe to pop royalty. In a recent auction, a “barely-there” bodysuit he created for Cher in 1978 sold for $57,600, seven times its estimated price, while a metallic tasseled bodysuit with lamé wings that Mackie designed for Tina Turner for a 1977 performance sold for $19,200.

“In my view it looks more enticing for the emerging artists who is seeking something other than what they were accustomed to”, he explained to a media outlet. “Contemporary performers are embracing a show-stopping, more theatrical, show-stopping, entrance-making statement.”

The Musical Comeback

It’s a look that sashayed all the way to the heart of popular culture in 2025 thanks to a global pop icon. In the past few months, 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, feathered armbands and glittering headpiece were tailor-made for a record named The Life of a Showgirl.

Swift is part of a trend. This year, glamorous nods have been embraced by music artists including Sabrina Carpenter as they whizzed across world tours in glitter, revealing designs and feathers, spotlighted against camp sets. A top stylist a fashion expert told Vogue he wanted to bring “a showgirl attitude” to her Radical Optimism tour – inspired by pictures from the 50s, the backup dancers fluttered giant plumed accessories.

Drawing from the Past

Lipa, Carpenter and other chart toppers also draw on 19th-century performances, including classic theater and chorus line references. The final look are vastly different from the 1990s era Britney Spears era of short shirts and utilitarian trousers, and street-style dance moves that came before them.

But some critics are convinced with this glamour resurgence. A former performer, a ex- Jubilee! showgirl who danced in the 2000s says the trend is “puzzling”. She thinks the word showgirl is being “treated as an umbrella term covering everything from The Radio City Rockettes to Broadway performers and now seemingly today's icons.”

A Coveted Retro Look

For millennial and modern stars, Mackie’s retro designs have become extremely desirable. In 2024, Zendaya gave a nod to one of Mackie’s iconic muses, Cher, when the actress wore a see-through beaded dress designed by the designer in 2001, which was reminiscent of one he made for Cher to wear in 1967. Months after, a singer paid an significant price to buy the Mackie tasseled mini dress she had worn earlier in the year to perform at the Grammys. In September, Carpenter wore a trio of vintage Mackie designs at the MTV Video Music Awards. They are also a popular item among fashion collectors.

“Showgirls evoke nostalgia for a past glamour,” says Su Kim Chung, a curator at the an academic institution, who documents the legacy of showgirls. “Currently it is considered a sort of ‘acceptable’ sexy because it has been modified. It has got all the glamour, the crystals and the glitter but without the nudity.”

A Than Simply Fashion: An Icon of Las Vegas

Chung says showgirls are central to the iconography of Vegas. She points to ex-mayor Oscar Goodman who, during public appearances, was flanked by two showgirls. While Las Vegas currently lacks any showgirl-based productions, Jung says they are still employed as an symbol of the city, being present at conventions and in promotional material. “The showgirl is still a remaining icon of Las Vegas glamour,” Chung says.

An Appeal of Escape

The former showgirl says the transformative effect of a showgirl persona is part of the appeal. This is a notion Taylor Swift alludes to in a new behind-the-scenes film that shows the off-camera action from her year-long 2023 Eras tour, which included intense practice sessions, training and 149 shows across dozens of cities, each going on for 3.5 hours.

Hardy recalls 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 steps to the platform from the green rooms three floors below in the underground. I had to leave early for my moment so I could recover before I went on stage. You are sweating the whole time but maintaining this image that it’s simple and gorgeous and dreamlike.”

Maybe this is where the true allure of the showgirl fantasy really resides. In the busyness of 2025 there is a longing for fantasy. What better figure to look to than showgirls, who have always embodied fantasy, idealism and a universe where no one falters.