Across all social media platforms, I’ve been seeing the same aesthetic over and over again: Balletcore. The trend comes with a few key style and beauty features, including legwarmers, frilly textures, bow patterns, shades of baby pink, and wrapped cardigans. Ballet-adjacent styles have always been present in fashion, starting with the excessive use of pastel tulle and satin in the Romantic era.
Similar to attending a ballet class, the general objective is to look put together in a hyper-feminine way. A good amount of the social media videos with the hashtag #Balletcore are girls actually attending ballet class and showing their outfits, making it both a functional and stylistic aesthetic. It’s like a reimagining of the “pilates princess” trend. It’s not quite the same as Carrie Bradshaw flaunting a white tutu in the middle of Fifth Avenue.
the Cycle Of Trends
Trends in the media are constantly in a cyclical, repeating pattern. So how did we get from the party girl aesthetic of the 2000’s to Balletcore? In just a couple decades, the face of women’s style has made a total 180° from Kesha to Hailey Bieber.
When “Euphoria” came out in 2019, I was sure that Rue and Cassie‘s messy, drunk, glitter aesthetic would take hold — it may have for a while, but its opposite took hold too. It’s interesting how we always have these battling aesthetics in the media, currently being the Charli XCX and Rachel Sennott of it all v.s. Balletcore.
Balletcore isn’t a completely new idea, as it certainly pulls from decades of fashion, and one comparison I love is Aubrey Hepburn. Aubrey was an aspiring ballerina, which shows in her style of sleek, elegant, and feminine pieces. Balletcore is also a little bit reminiscent of the well-known, “clean girl” aesthetic, with which it shares things like slickback hairstyles and almond-shaped nails. We’ve all seen the Tik Toks of “clean girl inspo” with pictures of matcha, waking up early, and yoga mats, and I’d argue that “clean girl” and Balletcore are two sides of the same coin.
Could Balletcore relate to Hollywood’s current obsession with being skinny? Ballerinas have been historically expected to appear thin for the appeal on stage as well as weigh little for partnering/lifts. With GLP-1s on the rise in the past couple of years, and the problematic term “heroin-chic,” re-entering social media, it doesn’t shock me that an aesthetic based on a body image-dependent sport is trending.
Leading Ladies & Brands
Hailey Bieber is undoubtedly at the forefront of Balletcore. Her tendency to wear pastels, her love of a slickback, and her frequent sporting of ballet flats all add up to a ballerina-esque look. Similar to Aubrey Hepburn, Hailey also grew up in ballet and even wanted to go professional.
I would assign Lily-Rose Depp as Hailey’s right-hand man for multiple reasons. I’ve literally never seen a paparazzi flick of Lily where she’s not wearing ballet flats. Furthermore, she’s a Chanel ambassador — a brand that I think embodies the idea of softness of Balletcore and helped pioneer it in the 20th century. Lily’s fluency in French and her French roots are the cherry on top for a French sport’s aesthetic.
Brands waste no time capitalizing on niche aesthetics and in the process, making them mainstream. My beloved Brandy Melville released a ton of Balletcore pieces in December, including a pointe shoe keychain and tops with ballet slippers on them. Brandy has also consistently had little pink bow patterns embroidered onto their cotton pieces, alongside LoveShackFancy, Urban Outfitters, and Princess Polly.
What do Ballerinas Think?
As a girl who did ballet for 10 years, I’d say the main issue a ballerina would have with Balletcore is within the marketing and advertisement of it. Hiring models instead of trained dancers for a photoshoot that requires pointe shoes is a hard watch. Truthfully, when the technique is non-existent and the model isn’t over the box of the shoe, it sort of makes a mockery of the difficulty of ballet.
A recent example of this is Christian Louboutin. Their current release is a “ballerina-inspired” shoe, and it’s actually pretty cute (disregarding the fact that it looks nothing like ballet shoes). The recent social media posts are so far from the actual style of ballet that it doesn’t really matter. Yet, Louboutin’s post from November features a model stretching and attempting to move as a ballerina would, and the comment section is full of comments like, “is the dancer in the room with us?” and “my eyes!!!”
On the other hand, I love that Balletcore is normalizing and popularizing ballet as a sport and an art. Ballet is a failing industry in the United States on multiple fronts:
- People might feel like they “don’t belong” in the highbrow culture of ballet.
- Ballet companies/schools aren’t performing effectively or respectfully.
- Professional ballerinas are not getting paid enough.
With social media to blame, a lot of the younger generation doesn’t have the attention span to sit through a 2-hour ballet like the Nutcracker or Swan Lake. Even if they do, so mant ballet performances have been recorded and posted online at this point, so throwing it on the TV is free and easier than trekking to the theater. Balletcore has the perfect opportunity to get people engaged with ballet, to create a bridge between the style and the actual art form.