Derby Shoes Are the Niche French-Girl Trend Replacing Ballet Flats
Across the runways and among the street style crowd, jazz slippers are stealing the show.
And a 5, 6, 7, 8!
This spring, it’s with great pleasure that we welcome jazz shoes to 2026’s center stage. Also known as derbies—or you might remember them as the lace-up Capezios you wore to Jazz Dance 101 as a kid—the shoe trend is a close cousin to ballet flats. But after years of balletcore, with designers iterating on the dance slipper in as many hybrids as the human brain can dream up, the Oxford-style jazz shoe delivers something different. Something with a bit more pizzazz.
Derby shoes recently chassé-d onto fashion’s radar at Celine’s Spring 2026 runway last July. There, new creative director Michael Rider showed a slew of French girl essentials done his way—i.e., with a mix of prep and play. Jazz shoes, long considered a Parisienne staple (more on that later), were rendered in cerulean satin, supple black leather ones, and bright white. It didn’t take long for Celine’s $970 derbies to become need-to-have status symbols among the fashion set; the brand's ballet lace-ups ranked fourth as the hottest product of the season, per fashion search platform Lyst's Q1 2026 report, with guests trotting around the most recent Paris Fashion Week in whatever version they could get their hands on.
Celine Spring 2026
Eva Chen wearing black leather derby shoes at Paris Fashion Week last month.
A growing cohort of brands has since followed in Rider’s box step. Jil Sander’s Spring 2026 derby shoes were fittingly minimal, while Dries Van Noten’s were the opposite (and bedazzled with crystals). In their Fall 2026 collections, Bottega Veneta, Tibi, and Ashlyn knew the show must go on, sending out soft leather jazz shoes in woven black and supple white leather.
Speaking of Bottega: Charlize Theron wore jazz slippers from the brand's Fall 2026 edit earlier this week. The Oscar winner was en route to The TODAY Show to do press for her new thriller, Apex, but could just as easily have been en route to dance rehearsals.
Charlize Theron in the jazz shoes trend on April 22.
Beyond the different dance genres, what separates a jazz shoe from a ballet flat is that the former provides more structural integrity thanks to its lace-up vamp and sturdy rubber sole. Though crucially, these aren’t to be confused with a stiff brogue loafer; these shoes are soft, meant to mold to the foot, and flexibly move with you.
It’s why Repetto’s Zizi Oxfords, a jazz shoe that founder Rose Repetto designed for her daughter-in-law, the dancer Zizi Jeanmaire, have remained a sell-out essential for six decades. Famously, in the ‘70s, Jane Birkin bought her partner Serge Gainsbourg a pair—“Serge was looking for gloves for his feet because he hated walking,” Birkin told French outlets at the time—and he fell head over flats for the calfskin shoe. Rarely will you find a photo of the famed Frenchman without Repetto’s white Zizis on his feet. “Legend has it,” the CEO of Repetto, Charlotte Gaucher-Holmann, writes over email, “that Gainsbourg wore through around 30 pairs of the Zizi a year.”
Gaucher-Holmann adds that the iconic Zizi Oxford has seen a recent uptick in popularity, “with annual growth of 10 percent over the past three years, reaffirming its cultural relevance. She credits the boost to Celine, as well as Jacquemus x Repetto’s limited-edition Zizis from 2024.
French singer and songwriter Serge Gainsbourg wearing his beloved Repetto Zizi Oxfords,
The fashion set’s favorite shoe designer, Jamie Haller, has observed a similar spike in demand for her lambskin Jazz Slipper, released in her namesake brand’s Spring 2026 lineup. Peruse around the fashion side of Substack, and you’ll find rave reviews for the lace-up shoe that Haller calls a fashion-inclined version of the jazz slippers she wore as an active dancer, before pivoting to fashion.
“What makes my [derby shoe] special," says Haller, "is that it’s personal, designed with inspiration from my personal dance slippers, and our signature sacchetto construction.” (Sacchetto is an Italian craftsmanship technique for uniquely soft, flexible shoes.) “That really creates a glove-like fit, and offers a softness and flexibility you can’t find in regular leather shoes.”
Outside Celine's Fall 2026 show, several guests sported the brand's new It shoe.
Whether you’re perfecting your pas de bourrée or looking for a flat you can comfortably walk 20,000 steps in, there’s no spring shoe trend better suited for both than a derby. Ahead, discover an editor-curated assortment of the Bob Fosse-approved spring shoe trend.
Shop Spring 2026's Derby Shoe Trend
