Brown Ballet Shoes

These are dance shoes, not flats. If you were sent here by a teacher who said "get brown ballet shoes," this is the page: canvas split sole ballet slippers in the shades most people mean when they say brown.

Brown is four shades, not one. Cacao and Kola are deep; Chai and Dune are medium. Within each pair one runs cool and one runs warm, because two people with the same depth of skin can have very different undertones, and a shoe in the wrong undertone reads as a shoe rather than as skin.

The point of a brown ballet shoe is to disappear. Pink was only ever "flesh" for some dancers; for everyone else it drew a hard line across the foot at exactly the place the technique is trying to lengthen. A shoe that matches carries the line of the leg straight through.

Both our adult and kids shoes come in all four browns, and two lighter shades besides. If you are between two, choose the deeper: a shade slightly darker than the skin reads as shadow, which the eye forgives. Not sure which? Our size and shade guide covers both fit and undertone.