How 'Showgirl' Became the Glittering Style of 2025

After a long-running tenure on the Las Vegas Boulevard, the dancers from the spectacle Jubilee! took a final synchronised kick in 2016. The show, renowned for its elaborate costumes designed by celebrated designer Bob Mackie, came to an end due to falling audience numbers and critical commentators who described it as a spectacle “a relic of another era”.

Currently, roughly eight years later, the showgirl, or at least the showgirl style, is back.

The Master of Sparkle

Dubbed the “master of glitz”, Mackie has made over-the-top stage sparkle his signature style, dressing everyone from Marilyn Monroe to pop royalty. Earlier this month, a “naked” bodysuit he created for Cher in 1978 sold for $57,600, well over its estimated price, while a shimmering fringed bodysuit with reflective wings that Mackie designed for Tina Turner for a 1977 performance sold for $19,200.

“In my view it looks more appealing for the emerging artists who is looking for something other than what they knew from childhood”, he explained to a newspaper. “New stars are striving for a show-stopping, more theatrical, attention-grabbing, grand statement.”

A Musical Revival

It’s a look that sashayed all the way to the centre of mainstream fashion in 2025 largely due to a chart-topping superstar. In the past few months, the cultural juggernaut wore one of Mackie’s classic Jubilee! costumes on the cover of her new musical project. The rhinestone encrusted bra and thong, ostrich-feather armbands and shimmering headpiece were tailor-made for a record called The Life of a Showgirl.

The singer is part of a trend. This year, showgirl inspirations have been adopted by pop stars including Sabrina Carpenter as they danced across concert platforms in sparkles, revealing designs and ostrich feathers, highlighted against theatrical sets. Her fashion curator her creative director explained to a fashion magazine he wanted to bring “a showgirl spirit” to her Radical Optimism tour – inspired by pictures from the mid-century, Lipa’s dancers waved giant ostrich feather fans.

Drawing from Tradition

Modern stars and other successful musicians also draw on 19th-century performances, including classic theater and ensemble references. The outcome are worlds away from the 1990s era teen pop of crop tops and baggy pants, and urban dance moves that preceded this trend.

But not everyone are on board with this glamour resurgence. Nancy Hardy, a one-time Jubilee! showgirl who danced in the early 2000s says the trend is “bemusing”. She thinks the word showgirl is being “treated as an umbrella term including everything from The Radio City Rockettes to Broadway performers and now seemingly Taylor Swift.”

The Coveted Classic Look

For younger and young adult stars, Mackie’s classic designs have become highly covetable. In 2024, a style icon honored to one of Mackie’s earliest clients, Cher, when the actress wore a translucent embellished dress designed by the designer in 2001, which was similar to one he made for Cher to wear in 1967. Later that year, a singer paid an private amount to buy the Mackie tasseled mini dress she had worn previously 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 favorite among fashion collectors.

“The showgirl aesthetic evoke nostalgia for a bygone era of glitz,” says a historian, a curator at the a Las Vegas university, who researches the history of showgirls. “Today it is viewed as a sort of ‘toned-down’ sexy because it has been modified. It has got all the sophistication, the crystals and the glitter but without the nudity.”

A Than Simply Style: An Icon of Vegas

Chung says the showgirl image are central to the iconography of Las Vegas. She points to ex-mayor Oscar Goodman who, during civic functions, was surrounded by two showgirls. Even though Las Vegas does not host any traditional showgirl productions, Jung says they are still used as an logo of the city, appearing at conventions and in advertisements. “The showgirl is still a remaining figure of Vegas glamour,” Chung says.

The Allure of Escape

Nancy Hardy says the transformative effect of a stage character is part of the appeal. This is a notion the singer alludes to in a latest documentary series that documents the backstage action from her extensive 2023 Eras tour, which included gruelling preparations, training and 149 shows across dozens of cities, each going on for 3.5 hours.

Hardy recalls her own stage routines as “like completing an endurance race in stilettos every night”. Her headdress weighed 34lbs. “I had to wear it all the way up the steps to the platform from the green rooms three floors below in the basement. I had to head up ahead of time for my entrance so I could rest before I made my entrance. One is perspiring the whole time but creating this fantasy that it’s easy and beautiful and dreamlike.”

Perhaps this is where the fascination of the showgirl fantasy really lies. In the busyness of 2025 there is a craving for fantasy. Who better to turn to than showgirls, who have always represented fantasy, idealism and a world where no one misses a mark.