Our story
A father-daughter family business, five years in the making.
Bio-based ballet tights. Made in Italy.
Belle started at the barre, not in a boardroom. Our family has spent five years around Westside School of Ballet in Santa Monica — watching a young dancer go through pair after pair of the same conventional nylon tights, watching how quickly a ladder could end a pair that had barely been worn. Belle is named by that dancer, and built alongside her father, Matthew.
The question that started the company was simple: why does a ballet tight, worn for hours of real physical work, use the same disposable petroleum nylon it did fifty years ago? The answer we found was that a better material already existed — it just hadn’t made its way into a $15 pair of tights sold directly to a dance family.
Why bio-based matters
The Convertible Tight is knit from EVO® by Fulgar, a polyamide made from castor oil and non-food corn rather than virgin petroleum, paired with LYCRA® FUSION™ ladder-arresting elastane. Conventional tights are worn a handful of times before a run ends them and they’re thrown away — an estimated 10 million pairs a year in the US alone. A tight engineered to outlast conventional nylon under the same care is the most direct lever we have on that number: fewer pairs bought, fewer pairs discarded.
Made in Castel Goffredo, Italy
Our tights are knit seamlessly in Castel Goffredo — the heart of the world’s technical hosiery cluster — on the same circular-knit machinery and craft tradition that supplies the finest hosiery houses in Europe. It costs more than a mass-market mill. We think it’s worth it.
Selling direct
Belle is a California family business making bio-based ballet tights — knit seamlessly in Italy from castor oil and non-food corn instead of petroleum, engineered to outlast conventional nylon, and priced with the incumbents at $15. There is no wholesale layer and no marketplace fee sitting between the factory and your order — which is how a $31–$40 quality tight reaches you at $15, the same price as the incumbents.
Proud to support Westside scholarship dancers.
What we stand for
Bio-based, not petroleum
Knit from EVO® by Fulgar — a polyamide made from castor oil and non-food corn — with certified bio-based content above 85%. Conventional tights are 100% virgin-petroleum nylon; roughly 10 million pairs are discarded in the US every year.
Engineered to outlast nylon
LYCRA® FUSION™ elastane arrests ladders before they spread — zero propagation through 20 wash classes — and the EVO® fiber recovers better, dries ~50% faster, and weighs ~25% less. Fewer pairs bought, fewer thrown away.
The luxury tier at $15
Materials and construction that normally sell for $31–40, at the same price as conventional tights — because Belle sells direct, with no wholesale layer and no marketplace fees. The ethical choice with no premium and no compromise.