4. The Ballet Flat

Before Audrey Kathleen Ruston morphed into the celebrated actress Audrey Hepburn, she was a young girl with the dream of becoming a ballerina.  “Once I started [dance lessons] in Holland,” she said years later, “all I wanted was to be a ballerina,”(quote taken from Enchantment by Donald Spoto).  However, Audrey’s life steered her in a different direction.  At five foot seven Audrey was told she was much too tall to be a dancer.  The news devastated her.  Audrey, as self-deprecating as she was, was always aware of her “short-comings”.  Taking a note from her character in Love in the Afternoon, Arianne said “I’m too thin! And my ears stick out, and my teeth are crooked and my neck’s much too long.” All things Audrey believed to be true about herself.  Perhaps, if Audrey was never told she was too tall we would have never been exposed to the ballet flat.  Because of her long physic Audrey didn’t like wearing high heels she much preferred a delicate shoe with a thin heel.  We were first introduced to this stylish shoe in Sabrina.  Audrey was shown wearing her soon to be signature capri pants with a pair of ballet flats outside the Larrabee building downtown.  A confounded Sabrina reluctantly debates whether or not she should keep her dinner date with the unfavorable, workaholic Linus Larrabee.  The flat heel complimented her slender physic creating a new trend that to this day is still at large. Ever so popular, the ballet flat is still seen worn by models on the runway.  Design houses like Chanel and Michael Kors recently put their personal touches on the stylish shoe.   Audrey, the dancer that she was, didn’t just wear ballet flats, she also wore traditional ballet slippers.  Whether it is her alter ego Jo Stockton from Funny Face fishing by the Seine wearing a pair of white capris and pink ballet slippers, or Audrey herself wearing a pair of white ballet shoes bicycling on the set of My Fair Lady; it can be said with absolute certainty that ballet flats are a shoe for every occasion.

(side not - probably not necessary: although the ballet flat may be a borrowed concept the paragraph above is written entirely in my own words.)