Red Sequined Sneakers

A pair of sneakers. They are made of red fabric and are covered in red sequins. They’re size six, and they’re slightly scuffed, dirty, obviously used. They are Balera brand, which is a dancewear company, and they’re part of a line of sneakers Balera sells that are made to dance in. I found them at a flea market roughly five years ago. They immediately became part of my shoe collection, which is one of my favorite and one of my biggest collections, but I only started thinking of it as a collection after the addition of these sneakers.

These sneakers mean a lot to me in a lot of ways, one of which is how they represent my collections. I’m a collector at heart. It’s just how I’ve always been and I have a lot of individual little collections that I have amassed over the years, but more than that I just like having things. They don’t necessarily have to be part of a specific collection or have a special significance to me, outside of this is a thing that I have and it’s mine and I like it and there is a story to tell about it. Even if it’s not something that has real, tangible significance to me, I still could talk about most of the stuff that I own for ages, these shoes included. So they help represent that aspect of my personality, of who I am.

They also help represent my love of clothes. I adore clothes. I adore making an effort to look good and feeling good because of it, and shoes are a really big part of that for me. You can tell certain things about me depending on the outfit I’m wearing and, more specifically, depending on the shoes that I’m wearing on a given day. They help represent that aspect of my personality, my love of clothes.

Coincidentally, they also represent something that I didn’t realize until recently: dance. I haven’t done dance in ten years and, while I went back and forth between loving it and hating it, it is something that I think of it often and that I look back on fondly. It’s something that I do still consider a part of my identity. It is one of the little pieces of who I am as a person. Knowing that these shoes are dance shoes feels full circle in a way. It feels fated. For me to end up doing this exhibit and picking this item and getting to do research on it and then finding out all of these years after I first got them, that these are dance shoes- I never would have known otherwise. It just feels meant to be in some way. I think that, at the end of the day, it’s just neat how things work out sometimes.