Russian Pointe® Retailer: Diana's Dancewear

Diana’s Dancewear in Cincinnati, OH, is one of Russian Pointe®’s longest-term customers. Diana’s opened in 1993, and they have been carrying Russian Pointes almost from the very beginning, when Russian Pointe® was still head quartered in Ann Arbor, MI.

“Anna Reznik and Alexei Kremnev were dancing with the Cincinnati Ballet at the time, and they recommended the [Russian Pointe® shoes],” owner Diana Queen remembers.

Today, Russian Pointe® shoes continue to be one of the most popular brands that Diana’s sells. “They are popular with my customers,” Queen says.

Diana’s is a full-service dancewear store that carries shoes, clothing and accessories for everything from tap to jazz, hip-hop, ice skating, lyrical, liturgical, belly dancing, gymnastics, salsa, ballroom and even clogging. But they are most known for their large selection of pointe shoes.

The pointe shoe fitting area is separate from the rest of the store, offering an intimate space for just the pointe shoe fitter and the dancer. “They have their own mirror and their own barre and a wooden floor,” says Ashley Roberts, a sales associate who conducts pointe shoe fittings at the store.

Roberts says she loves the versatility she gets with Russian Pointe®. “We get all types of feet,” she says. “No one else really has the ability to make such minute changes [in width, shanks, and vamps].”

Roberts says the most popular Russian Pointe® model they sell is the Rubin, although girls with narrow feet tend to like the Almaz, and girls who wear a size 9 or larger in street shoes prefer the Spotlight Collection.

Roberts, a dance major at Xavier University in Cincinnati, wore Entradas for years before switching recently to the Rubins.

Queen hires only experienced dancers, such as Roberts, to work as professional pointe shoe fitters at her store. “I think that’s why I’ve been successful,” Queen says. “I’ve hired pointe shoe dancers to fit the pointe shoes… That kind of sets us apart from the other dance stores in the area.”