- Hello, my beautiful swans. My name is Mina, and
welcome back to my channel. Welcome if this is your first time. Today, we're gonna be talking about ballerina fashion and balletcore which have been slowly gaining popularity over the past year or so, I would say. A couple of articles have predicted that the whole ballerina aesthetic is going to be one of 2022's
biggest trends, so we'll see. In this video, I'll be talking about the
history of ballet fashion, the inspirations, the
elements of the aesthetic, and the social criticisms and themes that are kind of pulled into it. (soft music) So balletcore is an
interesting aesthetic category because throughout the 20th century, ballet has been a huge inspiration in fashion and vice versa. Ballet first emerged
as an elite form of art in the early 1900s, or really the 1930s. Well I guess if you want to get technical, it was an aristocratic
art form that dates back to Italian Renaissance
courts in the 15th century. Dance historian Jennifer Homans told NPR that ballet's aristocratic
roots can even be seen today. - [Jennifer] If you
have a reverence, a bow, which is still performed
today in classical ballet, both in dances but also at
the end of most dance classes, that's the same bow that you would see in a painting of courtiers
leaving their king, and how far they bow, how deep they go was a sign
of respect for the monarch or for the person they were addressing. - Louis XIV of France then coded the dance into an artistic institution when he opened the academy
of Royale de Danse in 1661, with the aim of training
professional dancers to entertain his court. Ballet was historically a
male-dominated art as well, with men playing both female and male character roles on the stage. Ballet didn't become
associated with femininity till around the 1830s, and there's a couple reasons
for why that happened. Ilyana Karthas writes that
the privatization of ballet, the sexual commodification of dancers, an increasingly male audience, the invention of the pointe shoe and romantic themes of
supernatural exotic folklore all led to the feminization of ballet. Homans also adds that
the French revolution brewed this like hostile attitude towards aristocratic art
forms, including the opera, and the men performing
in these elite art forms were gradually becoming more unpopular in the eyes of society. Ballet's gender separation grew so severe by the end of the 19th century that critics believed male
dancing was this degrading act. One critic, Jules Janin,
wrote, "Under no circumstances do I recognize a man's
right to dance in public." Other than the negative
social implications with just having certain
activities designated for men and certain activities
designated for women, there was an even more
sinister consequence of this new feminization of ballet. The line between sex and dance has always been a little
blurry throughout history, but in the 19th century, there was like an epidemic of prostitution at the Paris Opera Ballet. So women entered the
ballet as young children, and they would train pretty aggressively and militaristically until
they could snag a position in the corps de ballet. These women were usually lower class, called insulting names like petit rats, and were vulnerable to the
sexual advances of abonnés, AKA wealthy male patrons of the opera. These patrons were
allowed backstage access so that they could watch and socialize with the dancers who were practicing. These abonnés were so powerful
that they could influence who got a coveted role
in the ballet production and who got fired from
the ballet altogether. So these girls were
essentially forced to play nice with these patrons if they
wanted to stay out of poverty. This atmosphere was so
prevalent in the ballet world that historian Lorraine Coons even said that all dancers who got leading roles, with or without the help of a rich patron, were looked down upon in society and stereotyped as being a sex worker. (dramatic music) On the costume front, there were some major
ballet costume changes throughout the 19th century. In the production of La Sylphide which premiered at the
Paris Opera House in 1832, Swedish ballerina Marie Taglioni
wore a white fitted bodice and a diaphanous calf-length tulle skirt, which was a shorter version
of the dress in Vogue in the 1830s, paired with satin
pumps that lace at the calf. The term tutu, which is
essentially what she's wearing, comes from the slang term
cuckoo, which means butt, which is what people in the cheap seats in the front could see. Taglioni is credited as
pioneering the on pointe technique and subsequently wearing
the first pointe shoe. It wasn't until the early 20th century that ballet started to get a
positive report among society. Ilyana Karthas explains this change as correlating with the
rediscovery of the human body during the 1920s physical culture craze. She writes, this era
promoted images of femininity and masculinity within a new
context of the physical body, athleticism and exercise, hygiene, and the general health of the nation. And subsequently, the
male dancer made a return, as his muscular body was
deemed a representation of good health and morality. Patricia Mears, Deputy
Director at The Museum at FIT, credits the Ballets Russes, a ballet company founded in Paris and produced by Russian-born
Serge Diaghilev, as first popularizing ballet as a source of inspiration
for fashion designers. On a more general note, the Ballets Russes is often attributed as being like the most influential 20th century ballet company due to their many collaborations with prominent and talented
artists of the time. Diaghilev, for instance,
commissioned works from composers including Debussy and Stravinsky, artists such as Picasso and Matisse, and on the fashion front, designers including Coco
Chanel and Paul Poiret. The success of the Ballets
Russes can also in part be attributed to the
general Orientalism craze spreading through the
west during this time, which you can see in Paul
Poiret's harem skirts and jewel tone colors. Coco Chanel even created
a couture collection inspired by traditional
Russian clothing in 1923. Mears says that the Ballets Russes essentially exported a fantasy of Russia to a European audience. Later in the 1930s, ballet's influence in
fashion continued on. For example, the artist Christian Berard's tulle skirted costume for the 1932 Cotillon Ballet production is theorized as being the inspiration for Chanel's 1930s tulle gowns. And while the color pink is the color most often
associated with ballet, the production of Sleeping Beauty showcased bluebird blue
and lilac costumes. Elsa Schiaparelli's second
signature color, sleeping blue, took inspiration from this production. So I'm just gonna show you guys a couple of my favorite ballet-inspired couture that was produced in
the last hundred years. So this dress was designed
by Cristóbal Balenciaga for Hattie Carnegie in 1950. As you can see, it's made of
pink silk, tulle, and satin with silver metal embroidery. I just love the shape of the bodice and how the tulle kind of rains
down in front of the peplum. This voluminous tulle gown was designed by Christian Dior in 1947. I love the gigantic
ribbon around the waist that trails behind with
the flowers attached. Dior used a lot of tulle in his designs, which definitely give a
full-skirted ballerina element. For more contemporary examples, I liked this dress from the Valentino couture
spring 2014 collection, but the entire collection is inspired by ballerina silhouettes and textures. I also love Marchesa's spring
2016 ready-to-wear collection, especially this dress that has these swan wing
details of the bodice. I mean you could really argue
that any dress or collection that uses tulle has been inspired by the legacy of ballet costume. I also really liked Erdem's
fall winter 2021 collection, which I found really inventive. Erdem drew inspiration from
the backstage of the theater, especially in how dancers would dash around half dressed
in their stage costumes and half dressed in their everyday attire. (soft music) So while we can see how ballet
has inspired fashion a lot, balletcore is something
a little different. In the year 2022, there seems to be two types
of ballet-inspired fashion, the first being inspired by the romantic performance costumes championed by Marie Taglioni, and the other being inspired
by casual rehearsal attire. I noticed that a lot
of the balletcore girls lean more towards the latter, probably because it's more
wearable for every day and not all of us can afford a closet of Simone Rocha tulle skirts. Oh, how I wish, though. Common elements I've seen in this style are arm and leg warmers,
tights, flared leggings, bodysuits, hair ribbons,
wrap tops and skirts, subversive basics, knit sweaters, silk slip dresses, ear muffs, headphones, yes, headphones is a trend, ballet flats, UGGs, tight hair buns, pearls, rose-scented
perfume, Dior Lip Glow, and the colors pink,
white, nude, and black. There is a lot of crossover
between the coquette aesthetic, which is a controversial
subculture that is, in the simplest description possible, the romanticization of girlhood. This overlap does make sense, because there is a heavy association between girlhood and ballet, what with the Angelina Ballerina and Barbie ballet movies in the media. I would also say that a good
number of girls in the US have at one point in their lives been enrolled in a ballet class
by their mom, me included. Inspirations and aesthetic
elements include Black Swan, Lily-Rose Depp, Elle
Fanning, Audrey Hepburn, Dior, Miu Miu, Blumarine,
angels, bows, cigarettes, and lots of photos of
just leg or just mouth. So let's unpack some of these things. I kind of already talked
about the tutu earlier, so I want to just talk about
the leotard for a second. The leotard was actually
created in the 19th century by the French acrobat Jules Léotard, but during the 19th century and for the early half
of the 20th century, leotards were mostly worn by
gymnasts and circus performers. That's not to say that
no dancers wore them. The Ballets Russes actually
wore a type of one-piece suit on stage for their
production of Ode in 1928. But original leotards were made of cotton and other natural fibers, so they would kind of
like bunch up and sag and just look kind of bad. - It was supposed to give, but it did not give what needed to be gave to the highest of giving. - Then in 1943, Harper's Bazaar published The Leotard Idea which was based on designs
created by Mildred Orrick. Fashion editor Diana Vreeland was hoping to introduce
the styles to young women, particularly college girls, since sportswear was
dominating fashion at the time. She worked with renowned
sportswear designer Claire McCardell and Townley Sports to create variations of the
leotard theme, but the designs were ultimately too
expensive to manufacture. In the 1960s, we got a really
important fabric innovation. DuPont's chemist, Joe
Shivers, invented Lycra. Well, Lycra was technically
patented in 1958, but it was introduced
to the public in 1962. The original goal for creating
Lycra was to create a better, more comfortable-fitting girdle, which was a popular woman's
undergarment for the time. Lycra was a hit at first, but sales started to fall
as the new generation of teenage girls stopped
purchasing girdles due to the fashion rebellion
happening in the 60s. And you know how the saying goes. Someone's trash is
someone else's treasure. I don't know. You know how it goes, but basically, the
underwear industry's trash was the dancewear's industry's, dancewear industry's treasure. Okay, I totally fumbled that
one, but you got what I mean. Especially with the growing fitness craze, Lycra became an incredibly
important material in dancewear from the seventies onward. I found an article published in 1976 covering the famous
ballerina Margot Fonteyn's new leotard designs, which were made of a Lycra,
polyester, and cotton blend. Under the ballet aesthetic, most of the girls participating in it opt for the bodysuit over the leotard. Bodysuits are less skintight and usually made of softer knit fabrics because they're not specifically
a sportswear garment. This makes sense because
bodysuits are more wearable, unless you have to pee in which they are equally
as unwearable as leotards. But yeah, they're generally more casual with the same visual
silhouette as the leotard. The ballet slipper, which is also a mainstay
of the balletcore look, was catapulted into mainstream popularity by Russian prima ballerina Anna Pavlova. She had very high, unstable arches, so to fix her form when she was on pointe, she added leather soles
inside her pointe shoes and hardened the box for more support. She made her first trip to the US in 1910, and while there, she requested shoes from the Metropolitan Opera
shoemaker Salvatore Capezio, and her positive review helped launch Capezio's future success. However, it wasn't until
1941 that the ballet flat became a mainstream fashion staple. At this time, designer Claire McCardell commissioned Capezio for ballet flats to feature with her fashion collection. Subsequently, department
stores like Neiman Marcus and Lord & Taylor purchased
and promoted Capezio footwear, leading Capezio to be made
the cover of Vogue in 1949. Nowadays, I think people are gravitating towards the ballet flat because it combines like two
popular trends at the moment. The first is, of course, like what this entire video is about, the fact that ballet flats have their origins in ballet aesthetics. And ballet flats were also
a common shoe preference among 60s era French girls, Brigitte Bardot famously
wore ballet slippers designed by Rose Repetto in the 1956 film And God Created Woman. Likewise, European it girls
Anna Karina, Audrey Hepburn, and Jean Seberg, I don't
think I pronounced that right, Jean Seberg also sported the ballet flat, adding to its reputation of casual glamor. (soft music) So, why is balletcore
so popular right now, or at least growing in popularity? According to stylist Madeleine Jones, I see the ballet-all-day movement as the natural evolution from athleisure. It's part of a greater
realization that, come what may, we've officially decided
comfort is enough, any day of the week. Now with the ballet movement, there's a way to give purpose
and elevate from athleisure to something almost theatrical. So even when you're putting on leggings, a wrap cardigan, or a corset, it still feels like you're
dressing up, but not overdressed. I definitely agree with Madeleine. I also think that the ballerina trend is a way of incorporating
subversive basics into an aesthetic. Subversive basics, for anyone who isn't
familiar with the term, is like a futuristic approach to basics. Think of tank tops and loungewear that include details like
cutouts, straps, and layering. It's been super popular
as its own design category in the past few years, and is credited as being a revival of the 90s cutout trends
championed by Thierry Mugler. I've noticed brands like
Maroske Peech and Nodress go so far as to even
incorporate balletesque elements into their subversive basic designs. I'm not gonna lie. I actually really do like balletcore, though I think that it
can get boring and old very quickly for people
who aren't actually dancers because there's very little variation to what I've seen in this aesthetic. I do like it in small doses
because, like Madeleine says, it kind of offers a feminine
flare to the athleisure trend. Spoiler alert. I don't know if you can tell
this from my personality, but I really don't like
athleisure personally. I don't go around judging people for wearing athleisure on the streets. but I just don't like the feeling of wearing running tights
when I'm out and about because I just feel like
I'm not ready for the day. That's just me. So the ballet aesthetic is a way for me to
comfortably move around, especially when I'm just going
to class or running errands, while still feeling like myself. So with that said, I think a major reason why it's popular right now is because of the hyperfemininity
associated with ballet, which has its pros and cons. English professor. Why did I say it like that? English professor Jennifer M. Miskec argues that the very principles that define ballet as an art form contain oppressive
ideologies about femininity. She says ballet is the perfect
space for ideal femininity, thin bodies, frilly
skirts, and speechlessness, graceful movements making it all look easy while hiding the pain,
physical anguish for beauty. Dance historian Marion Kant
challenges this assertion, writing, if you ask someone what most clearly symbolizes ballet, she will probably answer the
skirt and the pointe shoe. Kant then asks, why this
cult of the costume? Has ballet no message? Is it merely a flighty art
form of beautiful lines, of flowing skirts and satin shoes? The reality is that ballet is actually a very serious art form and its meaning has been kind of muddled and appropriated by TikTok
and Pinterest users. But this isn't new. Critics have been arguing for a long time about how letting any
little girl wear a tutu devalues ballet as a serious profession. As Chazin-Bennahum writes,
wearing a tutu signifies that the dancer has trained
vigorously and seriously in order to perform the romantic
and classical repertoire. So when an aesthetic like
balletcore is so hyper focused on the aesthetic elements of a culture, it can actually feed into
this notion that princess and ballerina culture are
intrinsically vapid girl hobbies. For example, Mariko Turk comments on how the movie Barbie in the Pink Shoes completely disregards
ballet's basic principle, for example, when the
character Kristyn declares she's just going to let
her feet do her own thing instead of listening to her
ballet teacher's instructions. - [Madame Natasha] This is not the choreography we rehearsed. - I don't mean to, Madame Natasha. I just get caught up in
the music and the flow and my feet just do their own thing. - Turk writes, ballet, when
packaged and sold to girls, is often emptied of its own
history and artistic meanings in order to promote princess culture's narrow visions of girlhood. But we can also ask what's so
wrong about liking feminine and girly things to begin with? What's so wrong with liking
pink and soft things? I don't think there's inherently
anything wrong with that. I, myself, am a girl's girl. I really like roses, and makeup, and frilly things, and
dresses, et cetera, et cetera, so I might be biased, but I
do, of course, still admit that there is this scary
side of the aesthetic, especially when we get
into the coquette girls who often romanticize abusive
relationships with older men, and whose tradwife desires kind of infringe on internalized misogyny. But I think as long as
you like girly things without falling into the
Lolita entrappings, there's nothing wrong with that. I also think our desire for femininity has heightened because of the plague years when a lot of us fell out of the habit of doing our makeup and hair
or getting dressed every day. As Pat Kirkham has pointed
out in her analysis of dress in Charles Crichton's
film Dance Hall in 1950, a classical ballroom gown-like
dream dress for dancing would be symbolic of an elegant, romantic mode of femininity. By wearing it, the female character and the female viewer alike could experience the transcendence of fairy tale-like fantasy into reality. But balletcore does have its downsides. When I was going through Pinterest
boards of this aesthetic, I couldn't help but wonder, why are all the photos of white women? And look, I don't think
it's a shock to anyone that ballet has a very racist history. The New York Times
published an article in 2018 on how a lot of Black and Brown ballerinas had to dye their own pointe shoes because they couldn't find shoes that matched their skin tone easily. In these photos, dancer Ingrid Silva is shown dyeing her shoes
with Black Opal's Ebony Brown, which costs about $11 a bottle, and one bottle can dye three shoes. She goes through an average
of two pairs of shoes a week, which means she would spend
$770 a year on makeup for shoes, which is a significant amount of money considering dancers' low pay. But despite all these entry
barriers, ballerinas of color have still been forging their way through, and it would be nice
if the Pinterest girls could reflect these changing times rather than just reposting
the same three photos of Elle Fanning, as much as I love her. Misty Copeland, for instance,
was the first Black woman to be promoted to principal dancer at the American Ballet Theatre. There was also Maria
Tallchief who's considered to be the first major
American prima ballerina. She was Indigenous and was active from
the 1940s to the 1960s. So I don't know. If racist Brigitte Bardot can
make it to the mood board, surely Maria can too. And of course, I don't want to say that there's no people of color
participating in this trend because there definitely are, for example, my friend Camri
who's a literal ballerina and has been doing the pink thing since she was out of the womb, and if you know where
to look on Pinterest, you can definitely find a lot of photos of feminine people of color. But I do think it's kind of concerning that a lot of balletcore
girls are just happy reposting other white girls,
which further normalizes the lack of diversity in the ballet scene. Okay, for this section, I do
want to add a trigger warning because I think it's kind of impossible to talk about this subject conclusively without mentioning the
fact that eating disorders are a really big problem. So if you're sensitive to this topic, please tread carefully
ahead, or alternatively, if you just want to skip
this section altogether, here's the timestamp for
where you can skip ahead to. Another problematic
aspect of this aesthetic is the glorification of the waif body, which is just like the
skinny, youthful, petite body. It's not a problem to have this body type, like I literally have this body type, but in my 24 hours of intense
research for this video, I've just come across so many gatekeepers who are blatantly fatphobic, and it's just like very frustrating and kind of darkly ironic
how actual ballerinas have been talking about
the toxic body image issues in this industry for a long time now, and now there're just a bunch of people who just like the style, most of them do not actually
dance, and that's totally fine, but they just like the style
and they're gatekeeping it. Misty Copeland even
wrote an entire article on her experience dealing
with an eating disorder catalyzed by the industry. She says that after injuring
herself during a rehearsal, her doctor put her on the pill
to help strengthen her bones, because at the time, she was so skinny, she wasn't menstruating, and she was skinny not because
she had an eating disorder but because she was burning
so many calories a day. It ended up taking a
year for her to recover, and during that year, the pill helped her gain
cleavage and a bit of a stomach, which then led her company
to pull her into a meeting and tell her that she
needed to lose weight. Another example, in her
book Dancing on My Grave, former dancer Gelsey Kirkland
writes about her experience studying under George Balanchine, one of the most influential
ballet choreographers of the 20th century. She said that one day he halted class and approached her for
a physical inspection. With his knuckles, he
thumped on my sternum and down my ribcage, clucking
his tongue and remarking, must see the bones. I was less than 100 pounds even then. He did not merely say, eat less. He said repeatedly, eat nothing. I know this is only a
part of the community, but it is like this resilient
part of the community, like resilient enough for me
to come across many people who subscribe to this kind of rhetoric, which is very concerning, and people in this part of the community not only body shame, but they
also glorify mental illness in the same vein as the
Tumblr sad girls of 2014 which I discussed in my last video. Like, I don't know. I came across a TikTok
video the other day, and I'm not gonna share it
with you because I don't want this person to get cyber bullied
or anything, but she said, women who relate Nina Sayers and men who relate to Patrick Bateman are made for each other. Like girl, what? You wanting to be Natalie
Portman from Black Swan is your own prerogative, that is very questionable
but is your own prerogative, but Patrick Bateman, the serial
killer from American Psycho, yeah, I think we should
all agree he deserves jail. - Where did you get that overnight bag? - Jean Paul Gaultier. - It's giving cute but psycho. It's giving Harley Quinn and joker OTP. So in conclusion, I like the aesthetic, I like the aesthetic
elements of the aesthetic, but I do think anyone
who participates in it or who wants to participate in it should be cautious of
the unhealthy rhetoric that is being pushed in some
circles of this subculture because it's very concerning and everyone should just look out for their own mental health. So, okay. That's all I have for today. Thank you so much for sticking around. Let me know in the comments
what you think of balletcore or just ballerina-inspired
fashion in general, and yeah, I'll see ya next time. I hope you have a lovely rest of your day. Bye bye. (soft music)
