Ballet has been inspiring fashion since its inception. But in the past year, it’s been having a particularly strong resurgence and #balletcore has reached 130m views on TikTok. With the release of Miu Miu’s ballet flats for women and renewed interested in 2010s Tumblr fashion, the pink-leotard, tight bun aesthetic is back. It’s also gaining traction for men, with rehearsal-wear and feminine dressing at the forefront of AW22 and SS23 collections – following the footsteps of pearls, skirts and dressing like your aunt. And celebrities from Mr Jeremy O Harris to Mr Harry Styles are having some fun with it.

Inspired by the silhouettes that dancers wear on stage and during rehearsals, balletcore incorporates ribbons, lace, mesh and Lycra, leg warmers, delicately shaped shoes, the colour pink and layering with fuzzy cardigans, boleros and dainty tops. Its impact is visible in the SS23 collections Dries Van Noten, Marine Serre, LOEWE, Dion Lee, Acne Studios and MM6, which dedicated most of its collection on ballet-inspired rehearsal-wear, showcasing ballet flats, boleros, tights and feminine tops. Plus, Simone Rocha, Molly Goddard and Miu Miu, which have always had a more delicate aesthetic in their menswear, and include men’s sizing in their ballet shoes. Harry Styles wore Molly Goddard’s signature ballet pumps on his most recent album cover, Harry’s House.

Though ballet has a distinctly “feminine” vibe today, like theatre, ballet was a male-dominated artform up until the 19th century, introduced in France two centuries earlier by King Louis XIV (who was allegedly an avid dancer) with men dancing both the male and female roles. It was only after the French Revolution that ballet was performed by women, with many of the royal dancers being condemned or exiled.

You may not have noticed, but balletcore-esque pieces have been present in menswear for a long time. Pointe-shoes were purely used on stage up until the ballet flat was first introduced in 1941 by the then-Harper’s Bazaar editor Ms Diana Vreeland (known for being editor-in-chief of American Vogue) as a women’s street shoe – shoes at the time were sanctioned, however the ballet shoe was exempt from these wartime restrictions.

But men have been wearing similarly shaped shoes across cultures even before then. This includes espadrilles and the bullfighter-shoes, zapatillas, in Spain and the traditional Korean hye, but also Mary Janes, a cousin of the ballet flat. Mary Janes, which have a strap across the arch, are a traditional school shoe but have been spotted in menswear collections for more than a decade, from Gucci and Givenchy to JW Anderson, Comme des Garçons and BODE, and seen on celebrities such as Harry Styles, Tyler, the Creator and Mr Evan Mock.