Ballet shoes have been in constant evolution since the first ballerinas removed the heels from their dancing shoes in the 1700s, to better articulate their feet in jumps. Later, to promote an ideal of unreal lightness for ballerinas, some were suspended on wires to allow them to skim the floor on their toes or rise into the air. In the early 1800s, dancers began rising to their toes on their own. Maria Taglioni is known as the first ballerina to dance a full-length ballet on pointe (La Sylphide in 1832).

But Taglioni's shoes were nothing like the pointe shoes of the 21st century. The first pointe shoes were simply flat slippers, lightly reinforced by the dancer; Taglioni's only support was darning around the toes. With such light support, the earliest pointework consisted merely of brief rises to pointe. Over the course of two centuries, ballet technique and the technique of shoemakers developed hand-in-hand, producing the more supportive shoes we know today.