How To Come Prepared To Your Pointe Shoe Fitting

Getting fit for pointe shoes is not like any other shoes. Pointe shoes can be damaging to your feet and can cause injury, so it’s important to come prepared for your pointe shoe fitting! You want to come prepared out of respect for your fitter, other dancers, and to avoid ending up in the wrong shoes and potentially causing an injury.

Whether it’s your first pair or you’re a seasoned professional, it’s important to come prepared. As pointe shoe fitters, these are things we want dancers to do if they’re coming to see us!

Make Sure You Actually Have TIME For A Fitting

If you’ve only got a few minutes before you run to class, that’s not the best time to get pointe shoes. Unless you just need the same exact shoe in the same size, allow anywhere from 10-30 minutes for your fitting (especially if you’re having issues.)

If you book your appointment on our website, it shows you the time slot allotted for your specific appointment.

Make Sure Your Feet Are Clean

If you’re coming straight from class, please wipe your feet with a disinfecting wipe. You wouldn’t want to put on stinky shoes a stinky foot tried on before you so please don’t do it to others. We also appreciate it when we don’t have stinky feet in our face while we’re fitting a shoe.

Make Sure Your Toenails Are Trimmed

When you don’t trim your toenails, it can cause unnecessary pain and effect your fitting. When you dance on pointe with long toenails, it can cause bruised toenails which can lead to your toenails falling off. 

If you’re not sure if your toenails are too long, touch the tip of your toe. If you can feel your toenail, it’s too long. 

Wear CLEAN Transition Tights

It’s okay to wash your tights! Way too many girls have come to us wearing dirty, stinky tights. Same thing as having clean feet, we don’t want to smell your tights during the fitting.

With your transition tights, please wear either a leotard or leggings over top. If you have on baggy sweatpants or a long dress, we can’t see your alignment, we can’t tell if you’re bending your knees or if your hips are out of whack. Your fitter is the first person that can point out a potential injury however, if we can’t see your body and alignment, we could be missing something that can lead to injury. You really should be wearing tight fitting clothing to your fitting.

Make sure your tights are TRANSITION tights. We need to see your feet so you’ll need to be able to roll your tights up, then roll them down to secure your toepad and easily slide your foot in the shoe.

Bring Your Toe Pads and Any Shoes You Would Like To Reference

If it’s your first fitting, you will be provided with toe pads and you obviously don’t have shoes to reference. For all other dancers on pointe, please bring your pointe accessories and shoes. 

We especially want to see your old shoes if you are having an issue with them. If you just want the same pair, it’s easiest if you bring them! So many dancers think they know what shoe they’re in but when asked, they don’t know all of the information. We need to know the brand, model, size, and width. Please bring your shoes!

These 4 tips are the bare minimum. There are a few other things we appreciate you doing.

Please show up on time to your appointment. Some days, we are booked back to back. If you are late to your appointment, that puts everyone’s appointment behind.

If you choose to walk-in, be prepared to wait. Appointments take priority! We’ve had customers get upset when they’ve chosen to walk in on a day we’re booked. We try our best to accommodate everyone, but if you walk-in, be patient please!

Did we leave anything off the list? Let us know in the comments and help other dancers out!