Jazz Shoes Are the New Ballet Flats

Reported by Harper's Bazaar.

Dance-inspired footwear has been quietly engineering a full takeover for the better part of this decade. Ballet flats came back hard, then came the ballerina sneaker and its sportier "sneakerina" cousin — and now, according to Harper's Bazaar, the next shoe obsession has officially arrived: the jazz shoe. Call it an oxford, a derby, a lace-up loafer — the names are still sorting themselves out — but the silhouette is unmistakable: glove-like fit, lace-front closure, a barely-there block heel. Equal parts archive and now.

The reference point is the split-soled slipper worn by 20th-century jazz dancers, but the modern iteration has the versatility of a great white sneaker without the athletic baggage. Repetto's Zizi Oxford — first released in the 1970s, beloved by Mick Jagger and Serge Gainsbourg, recently reintroduced through collaborations with Kaia Gerber — is perhaps the most obvious entry point. It carries that specific kind of subversive, unisex cool that doesn't try too hard precisely because it never had to.

From Runway to Checkout

Harper's Bazaar executive editor Leah Chernikoff put it plainly: "Our EIC Samira Nasr is one of the best-dressed women on the planet, and she swears by a white shoe." Chernikoff credits Nasr with selling her on the LWJS — little white jazz shoe — as the rare flat that reads as a statement and still works with everything from tailored trousers to an A-line skirt. That kind of wardrobe utility is hard to argue with. Writer Leandra Medine Cohen went further on her Substack, calling the white oxford "the Mary Jane's successor — the next viral flat." Considering her track record, that's less prediction and more announcement.

The runway backed them up. White oxfords appeared at Chanel, Moschino, Ujoh, and Pasqualetti for spring/summer 2025 — and by the time Michael Rider debuted at Celine with lace-ups front and center, the style had already reached sell-out territory. For spring/summer 2026, the silhouette is expanding beyond black and white into cobalt, red, and yellow, which means the trend has officially graduated from niche to inevitable. Charlize Theron sealed it recently, stepping out in cream jazz flats during a New York press tour and breaking the internet just enough to matter.

The jazz shoe's real power is what it does to everything else in your wardrobe — it's the flat that earns its keep without disappearing into the background, and that's exactly why it's not going anywhere.

Read the original at Harper's Bazaar.