Pointe shoe unfit to wear in situations other than informal practice or rehearsal. Under moderate usage, a pair of pointe shoes will typically last through ten to twenty hours of wear. For dance students, this often translates into weeks or months of serviceable use from a pair of pointe shoes. Professional dancers typically wear out pointe shoes much more quickly; a new pair may wear out in a single performance. As a result, most professional ballet companies provide shoe allowances for their dancers to defray the cost of frequent shoe replacement. The lifetime of a pointe shoe depends on many factors, including:
Areni-1 shoe worn for millennia across a large and environmentally diverse geographic region. According to Pinhasi, the Areni-1 shoe is similar to the Irish "pampooties", a shoe style worn in the Aran Islands up to the 1950s. The shoes are very similar to the traditional shoes of the Balkans, still seen today in festivals, known as Opanci ("Opanke"). When the material was dated by the two radiocarbon laboratories in Oxford and California, it was established that the shoe dates back to 3,500 B.C. This date is a few hundred years older than the date given for the leather shoe found on Ötzi