🔗 Share this article How 'Showgirl Glamour' Became the Dazzling Look of This Year Following a 31-year run on the Las Vegas strip, the showgirls from the production Jubilee! took a final choreographed kick in 2016. The show, famous for its ornate costumes created by style icon Bob Mackie, ended its run due to declining audience numbers and unimpressed commentators who called it a spectacle “trapped in time”. Today, roughly eight years later, showgirls, or at least the showgirl style, is making a comeback. A Master of Glitz Dubbed the “master of glitz”, Mackie has made theatrical showgirl glitz his defining aesthetic, dressing everyone from screen legends to music superstars. In a recent auction, a “barely-there” bodysuit he made for Cher in 1978 sold for $57,600, well over its initial estimate, while a shimmering fringed bodysuit with reflective wings that Mackie crafted for Tina Turner for a 1977 concert sold for $19,200. “I believe it looks more appealing for the new generation of stars who is looking for something other than what they were accustomed to”, he told a media outlet. “Contemporary performers are embracing a theatrical, more theatrical, breathtaking, grand statement.” A Musical Resurgence It’s a look that glided all the way to the centre of popular culture in 2025 largely due to a global pop icon. In the past few months, the entertainment titan wore one of Mackie’s vintage Jubilee! costumes on the cover of her latest record. The rhinestone encrusted bra and thong, ostrich-feather armbands and glittering headpiece were perfect for a record named The Life of a Showgirl. The singer is part of a trend. This year, glamorous nods have been incorporated by pop stars including Dua Lipa as they whizzed across arena stages in glitter, strategic openings and plumes, highlighted against theatrical sets. Lipa’s stylist her creative director explained to a style publication he wanted to bring “a showgirl attitude” to her Radical Optimism tour – inspired by pictures from the 1950s, her performers wafted giant ostrich feather fans. Drawing from Tradition Lipa, Carpenter and other chart toppers also reference 19th-century entertainment forms, including burlesque and chorus line references. The final look are vastly different from the late-century Britney Spears era of revealing tops and baggy pants, and urban dance moves that preceded this trend. But some critics are convinced with this glamour resurgence. An ex-showgirl, a former Jubilee! showgirl who danced in the 2000s says the trend is “puzzling”. She thinks the word showgirl is being “used as an catch-all phrase covering everything from The Radio City Rockettes to Broadway performers and now apparently modern pop stars.” A Coveted Vintage Style For millennial and millennial 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 star wore a see-through beaded dress created by the designer in 2001, which was inspired by one he created for Cher to wear in 1967. Subsequently, a singer paid an private amount to buy the Mackie tasseled mini dress she had worn earlier in the year to perform at the Grammys. In September, the singer wore a series of classic Mackie designs at the MTV Video Music Awards. They are also a hit among fashion collectors. “Showgirls bring about a sense of longing for a bygone era of glitz,” says an archivist, a curator at the an academic institution, who researches the legacy of showgirls. “Currently it is viewed as a sort of ‘acceptable’ sexy because it has been updated. It has got all the glamour, the rhinestones and the glitter but without the nudity.” A Than Just Fashion: An Symbol of Las Vegas She says the showgirl image are key to the iconography of Vegas. She points to former mayor Oscar Goodman who, during public appearances, was accompanied by two showgirls. Even though Las Vegas does not host any showgirl-based productions, Jung says they are still featured as an logo of the city, showing up at corporate events and in advertisements. “The showgirl is still a lasting icon of Vegas glitz and glamour,” she says. The Appeal of Illusion Hardy says the magical transformation 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 captures the backstage action from her massive 2023 Eras tour, which included intense rehearsals, workouts and 149 shows across dozens of cities, each lasting 3.5 hours. She recalls her own stage routines as “comparable to completing an endurance race in heels every night”. Her feathered headdress was 34lbs. “I had to support it all the way up the stairs to the stage from the green rooms three floors below in the lower level. I had to leave early for my entrance so I could recover before I went on stage. You are working hard the whole time but crafting this illusion that it’s easy and beautiful and magical.” Maybe this is where the true allure of the showgirl really lies. In the chaos of 2025 there is a craving for fantasy. Who better to look to than such icons, who have always personified make-believe, flawlessness and a world where no one makes a mistake.