30 Years Later, <i>Showgirls</i>’ Impact Is Everywhere—From Taylor Swift to <i>Euphoria</i>

When Showgirls was unleashed upon the world 30 years ago, it was a chaotic blur of sequins, sweat, scandal, and sleaze. Paul Verhoeven’s NC-17 drama about Nomi Malone (Elizabeth Berkley), an ambitious drifter determined to claw her way to stardom on the Las Vegas strip, was famously misunderstood. Initially declared a Razzie-winning, critically-panned flop, Showgirls has since experienced a noble rebirth, ascending into the pantheon of cult classics and celebrated for its audacity, unapologetic camp, and, perhaps most lastingly, its style.

The controversy around Showgirls was so omnipresent that it saturated my childhood memories, but the parts I remember most are the costumes and makeup. The rhinestone-studded stage looks, glittery cosmetics, animal print lamé, and marabou-trim robes were a feast of excess glam that settled into my DNA. Now, it feels like a fashion prophecy, foretelling the modern obsession with maximalist glamour that infuses everything from Euphoria’s shimmery tears to Taylor Swift’s rhinestone-heavy album visuals for The Life of a Showgirl.

At the center of this vision was Ellen Mirojnick, the costume designer tasked with creating a world of sparkly spectacle for Verhoeven’s Vegas. By 1995, Mirojnick was already known for Sharon Stone’s infamous little white dress in Verhoeven’s Basic Instinct and putting Michael Douglas in colorfully smug suspenders for Wall Street, but Showgirls required an entirely different sensibility. Its setting was the old Strip—glitter out front, grit in the wings—so the costumes had to be louder, brighter, and brasher than anything she’d done before. “It was not the Vegas we think of now, or even 10 years ago, I can’t even say if it was in transition, to be honest with you, because it was either really sleazy or just sleazy,” she tells ELLE. “It lived on the darker side, more or less, but that was appropriate for what we needed.”

Although Mirojnick traveled to Las Vegas to scope out the city before filming, she didn’t exactly try to recreate authentic showgirl costumes seen in classic revues, like Jubilee!, whose costumes were designed by Bob Mackie. (Swift wears one in a shoot for the forthcoming Showgirl album.) Back then, research was analog and scarce; you couldn’t drown in references even if you wanted to. “I did some picture and movie research, though quite frankly, a huge amount came from the imagination,” says Mirojnick. There’s a fine line between doing too much research, she says, because once an image gets in your head, it can steer the costume design off course. So she chased the temperature of mid-’90s Vegas, gathering textures and tones from elsewhere, particularly Gianni Versace’s glossy coffee-table tomes Versace Signatures and South Beach Stories. Those books, she says, “were a very, very good influence” on the shapes and spirit of the Showgirls costumes.

Sourcing followed the same logic. “Brand wasn’t a word we used back then,” Mirojnick says. Instead of chasing logos, she built the majority of Nomi’s wardrobe through Exit 1, a small shop that used to be on L.A.’s Melrose Avenue and run by a designer named José Arellanes. “It was glorious,” she remembers. “He had such a talent to understand how to translate a sketch, what we were after, the tonality of it. I would say he was a very, very key player. Any kind of feeling that I wanted for Nomi originated with that dark side of Vegas, and emanated from Exit 1.” Many of Nomi’s key costumes came from there, including the rehearsal looks and the mirrored chain-mail and metallic pieces, such as the collared tiger-print top she wears at the end of the film. Contrary to popular belief, the metallic blue blazer and skirt set that she wears when she officially becomes the star of Goddess wasn’t Versace but a design from Exit 1. According to Mirojnick, the only real Versace piece was the famous “Versayce” dress: a sleeveless LBD with diamond cutouts and medallion accents. She recalls buying it at the actual boutique in the Bellagio mall.

Elizabeth Berkley on the set of Showgirls.

The dress choice was character-driven. It does the talking even as the mispronunciation lands the joke. “Nomi had to appear a bit more elegant and not trashy,” says Mirojnick. “She tried to have a persona that was elevated, and thought that by going into Versace and buying a dress, she could be really presentable.” Beyond the character wardrobes, Mirojnick designed a series of jaw-dropping stage spectacles: the volcanic eruption, the S&M tableau, and the wedding sequence. “It was all pushed to being slightly overdone on every level,” she recalls. “So, whether it was the choreography, the costumes both onstage and off, character by character…everything was purposely pushed.”

“Nomi had to appear a bit more elegant and not trashy,” Ellen Mirojnick says.

When Gina Gershon’s HBIC Crystal came out in the volcanic show, she originally wore a bodysuit painted and embellished on nude stretch fabric—a couture-level piece made by a New York artisan named Janet Blur. Verhoeven, ever committed to shock, found it too modest. In a fitting, he demanded scissors. “She’s far too covered,” he told Mirojnick, resulting in her team having to slice away until the suit was barely there. What survives onscreen looks closer to just pasties than a full-on costume. “He was absolutely, without a question, so committed to letting Showgirls be Showgirls,” she says. “We worked with the text and fulfilled Paul’s vision of what he felt Showgirls to be, and I think as an end result, we did exactly what he had in mind.”

Gina Gershon and Elizabeth Berkley sharing a scene in Showgirls.

As the initial star (before Nomi pushes her down the stairs), Crystal embodies old-school Vegas: marabou, feathers, and Swarovski sparkle, with a dash of country cowgirl. “Crystal was a bit more traditional in the way of a showgirl who did make it, and what showgirls were,” explains Mirojnick. “She’s everything that Nomi aspires to, and it’s her interpretation of what success looks like. In this case, it is glamour, sparkle, Hollywood, and being the theatrical, prominent star—just star, with capital letters blinking off and on. We set up a contrast [between them] that was clearly different. But it was really reflected in what the other one wanted.”

Mirojnick created the framework with her costumes while makeup artist David Forrest filled in the details that made the film shimmer. His approach was just as exaggerated, with full-fledged, glittered eyelids, rhinestones along the brow bone, and bold red lips. It’s impossible not to connect these looks to Euphoria, with Donni Davy’s makeup feeling like direct descendants of Forrest’s designs—even if unintentionally.

The film’s sparkly aesthetic seems to be a clear reference to modern hits like Euphoria.

If critics once dismissed the film as tacky and over-the-top, time has given it its flowers. Designers like All-In and musicians like Ariana Grande have openly paid tribute to Showgirls’ maximalism, while Pamela Anderson’s 2023 The Last Showgirl leaned into similar Vegas tonalities. Swift’s forthcoming album, with its rhinestones and feathered accents, reads like an intentional homage. Even Berkley, once scapegoated for the film’s failure, has been re-embraced as an icon.

For Mirojnick, the glitter remains the lasting metaphor. “Faceted stones are things of glory for me, because I really do believe how much the light makes a difference when you look at it,” she explains. “It raises your frequency to the highest level. That’s why you go, show me more. You just want more.”