The first wave of balletcore was easy to recognise: pale pink, satin, ribbons, bows, tulle and a pair of ballet flats. It translated ballet into a shopping list. The newer wave is more interesting. It looks less like a fantasy ballerina and more like a person who has just left rehearsal—layered, tired, strong, slightly disordered and still carrying the posture of the work.
01 / The second act
The trend returned with evidence of labour.
By 2026, fashion coverage was describing balletcore’s return as more Black Swan than Sugar Plum Fairy. The shift is not simply from pink to black. Actual dancers, dance-trained performers and rehearsal imagery are becoming more visible. Grey cotton can show sweat. Knitwear slips from the shoulder. Leg warmers, tights and bodysuits are layered for use rather than styled into a perfect matching set. Softness now sits beside strain.
This development gives the trend a longer life. A decorative code can be copied quickly and exhausted. A practice contains routines, tools, spaces, bodies, hierarchies and emotions. It can keep generating new interpretations because it is a whole culture rather than one look.
02 / The wardrobe system
Ballet contains three collections at once.
The durability of balletcore comes partly from ballet’s unusually complete wardrobe architecture. Warm-up wear is protective, oversized and layered. Rehearsal wear is fitted, adjustable and designed to reveal alignment. Stage costume is symbolic, spectacular and built for distance. Fashion can move among all three without leaving the world.
Vogue’s historical survey of “balletomania” notes that the influence of practice clothes—leotards, tights and knitted separates—reaches back to the 1930s and 1940s and returned strongly in the 1970s. The present cycle extends that lineage through activewear, off-duty dressing and social media access to dancers’ working lives.
Spring/Summer 2025 collections showed the range clearly: Alain Paul translated a dancer’s knowledge into fluid tailoring and pointe-informed shoes; Simone Rocha worked with tutu volumes and slippers; Cecilie Bahnsen combined balletic volume with climbing and outdoor codes; Ferragamo used wrap layers, leotard forms, warm-up trousers and dance-bag logic. The strongest examples treated ballet as a system of construction, not a bag of motifs.
03 / The emotional engine
Control and vulnerability occupy the same body.
Ballet holds contradictions that brands usually have to manufacture: discipline and fantasy, precision and injury, uniformity and individual expression, delicacy and muscular force. The visual appeal of a ribbon or a line of the leg is inseparable from the effort required to produce it.
This tension explains why the aesthetic can shift from coquette sweetness to punk, athletic, dark or dishevelled interpretations without losing its identity. The commercial opportunity is not one colour palette. It is the emotional movement between preparation and performance—between the person doing the work and the image presented to an audience.
04 / Beyond fashion
The practice can organise an entire experience.
- Product
Translate wrapping, adjustment, protection, balance or repetition into footwear, bags, furniture, stationery and wearable objects—not only into decorative bows.
- Space
Use the logic of the studio: barre, mirror, marked floor, changing room, wings and stage. A retail or exhibition journey can move from preparation to exposure.
- Campaign
Build around rehearsal, counting, correction and iteration. The process can be more distinctive than another finished arabesque.
- Participation
Commission dancers and choreographers to shape movement, casting and public programming. The cultural source becomes a collaborator rather than a prop.
05 / The responsibility
Do not confuse access with expertise.
Dance Magazine’s conversations with professional dancers reveal the central tension: visibility can benefit ballet, but generic pink imagery can also flatten who dancers are. Pointe shoes are specialised equipment, not a styling accessory for an untrained model. Using them carelessly can look absurd, disrespect the craft and create a real safety risk.
The answer is not to place ballet behind glass. It is to bring practitioners into the work. Consult dancers on movement and clothing. Cast people with the skills being represented. Credit the choreographic source. Make room for bodies, genders and identities that the “perfect pink ballerina” stereotype has historically excluded. A richer representation is both more responsible and more creatively fertile.