Essie Ballet Slippers: The Fascinating Backstory Behind the Queen's Favorite Nail Polish

Her royal highness's blessing supported its rep as an unassuming, ladylike shade—and put the color on the map in the process. Essie declined to share revenue of Ballet Slippers following the queen's request, but it's fair to say that her affection for it aided its success. Soon everyone wanted it. Even today a bottle of it is sold every two seconds, and nearly 80,000 bottles have been sold in just this year to date. (That's only four months, FYI.) So far, it's the best-selling Essie shade of 2018.

Its staying power might have to do with its constant appearances in pop culture. Royals aside, Ballet Slippers also made a cameo in the 2003 novel The Devil Wears Prada by Lauren Weisberger, in which a character reports that Vogue staffers layer it with one coat of Essie's Marshmallow. (This sheer white shade makes Ballet Slippers "pop," according to Rita Remark, manicurist and global lead educator for Essie.) Having worked at Vogue, I can attest to the theory that as a skittish 20-something, you probably don't want to draw too much attention to yourself there. (I spent a lot of time shrinking behind my desk.) But that's just me—and other, more seasoned staffers had no qualms about wearing dark or colorful polish.

Then, in 2008’s Don't You Forget About Me (the eleventh book in the Gossip Girl series), Blair Waldorf got nostalgic about her best friend, Serena van der Woodsen, painting her nails with Essie’s Ballet Slippers. "[Blair] remembered how much fun they used to have playing dress-up when they were little, trying on clothes in her room all afternoon and drinking Campari and sodas with lime, giggling together in the bathroom mirror as Serena expertly painted Blair’s nails with black liner, or lacquered her nails with ballet slipper pink Essie polish," wrote Gossip Girl author Cecily Von Ziegesar. In this context, the polish represents a time when Blair wasn’t quite so conniving and competitive. She’s nice! She’s not trying to find ways to take Serena down a notch! It was a simpler, sweeter time, which is totally in keeping with the ethos of Ballet Slippers.

As with Blair, Ballet Slippers was like a rite of passage for many women. For Zoe, 25, a lawyer in Ann Arbor, Michigan, it's one of only five nail polishes she owns. "I received it as a gift in a set of other polishes when I was a teenager," she says. "It was the only one of them that I repurchased. I like that it's the 'no-makeup makeup' of nails, if you will, but it can also work as a more opaque pink with multiple coats or—and this is my favorite part—with other polishes to tone them down, brighten them up, or just add a little shine." It's the kind of shade that can do it all—including make you feel like you're on your game. "It's almost a security blanket," says Brittany, 27, a publicist in New York City. "Even if I hate my outfit and my hair's shit, I feel put together and polished when I wear Ballet Slippers." (Hey, it has a rep of being "safe" for a reason.) Plus, it's as low-maintenance as it gets. “I started wearing it at least five years ago,” says Christina, 26, an engineer in Los Angeles. “I liked that it was light enough that you can’t see when it starts to chip."