On her pointe, a dancer becomes ethereal and inaccessible. It is not only her technique and her passion for this art of hers that place her on a pedestal unattainable by other mortals. It is also that majestic, romantic and cruel shoe, hard at the toe and ductile at the sole, that transforms her into a delicate and robust creature. The dancer Marie Taglioni was the first to ride them at the Paris Opera to represent The Sylphs, in 1832; Until then, dancers wore high-heeled shoes. This change in footwear and the rise of pointe shoes somewhat freed the dancers, who were able to take flight and move without completely depending on their co-star.
His build has evolved over the years. The famous Anna Pavlova, who reinforced its sole with a leather insole, is credited with its current shape. Although couturiers such as Christian Dior and Elsa Schiaparelli put them on her catwalk in the 1940s, the jump from pointe shoes to the streets did not come until the 1950s. The designer Clair McCardell, who worked with Capezio, a manufacturer of footwear specialized in dance, introduced them to the shop windows, making them with rubber soles.
The woman, accustomed to salons, had never known such a comfortable shoe. Its rise was unstoppable. The cinema played its part and popularized them by putting them on its great stars, Brigitte Bardot in And God Created Woman (1956) or Audrey Hepburn in Funny Face (1957). Even before that decade, in 1939, red ballet flats became, on the feet of Judy Garland, the most iconic shoe in cinema: the Wizard of Oz ballet flats.
Magazines and celebrities did the rest. The dancers of the model Carla Bruni, always at the side of the politician Nicolas Sarkozy, and those of the performer Keira Knightly, who walked with them to the altar, became famous. Twiggy also made them her fetish shoe when she was not on the catwalk and Lady Di, passionate about dance, defended the ballerina throughout her life in everyday looks.
Fashion houses are responsible for its validity in closets. In 2016, Miu Miu made them its flagship and its satin model is today the most similar to the classic tips on the market. The obsession with athleisure - the streetstyle trend that consists of mixing sportswear with casual fashion - culminated in 2022 in balletcore, which combines ballet pieces with sportswear.
The big brands have at least one dancer in their catalogue. Dior, Prada, Simone Rocha, Valentino... But if there is a brand that has made ballet flats its raison d'être, it is Pretty Ballerinas.
The Menorcan brand that belongs to Mascaró began manufacturing tips for the Mahón Opera House, the oldest in Spain. Little by little, as the obsession with ballerinas grew both on stage and in the streets, they brought them into street style with fun designs, full of color and, above all, very comfortable.
