How Bazaar Editors Style Their Favorite Repettos

Reported by Harper's Bazaar.

There's a reason the ballet flat never fully disappears — it just waits for the right moment to reclaim the conversation. Right now, that moment belongs to Repetto, and according to Harper's Bazaar, it's not a coincidence. The French brand has been making shoes since 1947, when founder Rose Repetto crafted her first pair for her son, choreographer Roland Petit, who kept complaining about his aching feet after dance rehearsals. What started as a maternal fix became a cultural institution: the Cendrillon flat was made at Brigitte Bardot's request in 1956, the Zizi lace-up had Mick Jagger as an early devotee, and this spring, Kaia Gerber designed a capsule collection with the brand. The through-line is butter-soft leather, jewel-toned colorways, and a silhouette that somehow looks current in every decade.

How Editors Are Actually Wearing Them

The Camille — a heeled ballerina flat with just enough lift to sharpen your posture — is the piece getting the most mileage right now. Commerce editor Kristina Rutkowski has been devoted since the mid-2000s, when Alexa Chung was pairing them with denim cut-offs in full indie-sleaze mode. She gravitates toward black, folding them into transitional outfits built on texture contrast: white poplin, a red tee, brown suede. The formula works because the shoe doesn't fight for attention — it just makes everything else read sharper. Meanwhile, executive editor Leah Chernikoff went straight for silver, noting that the same outfit becomes something entirely different when you swap sensible footwear for a heel that tips slightly toward coquettish. Slightly being the operative word.

Fashion commerce editor Michella Oré opted for the Zizi — a white leather lace-up with a cult following she's been tracking since last fall — and reports zero break-in period, which, for leather shoes, borders on miraculous. She's been wearing them with punchy denim and fisherman pants through spring's unpredictable temperature swings, already planning a fall pivot toward ankle-skimming dresses. Deputy visual director Claudia Cruz went the other direction entirely: Cendrillon flats in yellow wheat, worn with a yellow-on-yellow Oxford-and-cable-knit situation that reads prep school in the best possible way. The logic of wearing yellow to celebrate May is not complicated, but it is correct.

The Camille alone comes in 20 colors, which means there's genuinely no excuse for not finding your version. Gen Z has already figured this out — Lily-Rose Depp, Olivia Rodrigo, and Gerber have all been spotted in Repetto recently, mostly with low-rise denim or easy sundresses. The shoe isn't trending so much as it's cycling back in, the way anything built on actual quality eventually does.

A great flat doesn't ask you to compromise — it just quietly makes every outfit more intentional.

Read the original at Harper's Bazaar.