About Us
Founder Profile
Helen Banks
Founder & Creative Director
I’m Helen Banks, Founder and Creative Director of Imperfect Pointes. After more than 20 years across fashion, retail and sportswear – including ASICS – I launched the brand in 2020 because I believed the dancewear industry needed something different.
My product experience and Sustainable Business Leadership study at the University of Cambridge shape what we do today: making great dancewear more responsibly, while challenging dated stereotypes about who ballet is for – whatever your size, shape, gender, skin tone or ability.
Our story
Why we started Imperfect Pointes
Helen came from a fashion and sportswear background. When her daughter entered the ballet world, she started to notice frustrations with traditional dancewear – particularly around sustainability, fit, inclusivity and product choice.
Imperfect Pointes began as a side project.
In March 2020, Helen was made redundant from her sportswear brand management role at ASICS Europe. That moment, combined with lockdown, became the point at which Imperfect Pointes changed from an idea into a serious independent brand.
Why the name
“Imperfect Pointes”?
The name comes from two beliefs that have shaped the brand from the start.
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You don’t have to be perfect to do ballet.
Ballet can be for anyone, regardless of shape, size, gender, skin colour or ability. Yet the images, expectations and products associated with ballet can still make people feel that their body somehow means they are excluded. We want to help change that.
We think carefully about who we feature in our campaigns, whose bodies we design for and the messages we put out into the dance world. That means working with Black and brown dancers, adult ballet dancers, professionals, students – all with a wide range of body types.
We also want trans dancers to know that Imperfect Pointes is a welcoming place. Helen is always happy to talk directly about fit or leotard customisation, privately and without judgement.
For us, inclusion isn’t just about imagery. It should be visible in what we make, who we represent and how people feel when they come to us.
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Sustainability doesn’t have to be perfect to make meaningful progress.
We are a small independent brand, continually looking at how we can make things better – from the materials we choose and where we manufacture, to durability, take-back schemes and what happens to our products when they can no longer be worn.
We’re proud of the progress we’ve made, but we don’t pretend to have every answer. Being transparent means talking about what we are still working on as openly as we talk about what we have already achieved.
That, ultimately, is what Imperfect Pointes means to us: fabulous dancewear people want to dance in, a broader idea of who belongs in ballet, and a commitment to keep doing things better.
Experience
From the fashion industry to dancewear
Helen’s experience spans fashion, retail, sportswear and, now, six years immersed in the dancewear industry.
Earlier in her career, she held senior roles in fast-fashion brands including Boohoo and Misspap, where she learned first hand the darker side of fast fashion and the impact of bad practices on garment workers and the planet. No surprise, then, that speaking up when things didn’t sit right eventually cost her both jobs. She later moved into sportswear as a Brand Manager at ASICS, developing her knowledge of product, performance fabrics and apparel.
Since founding Imperfect Pointes, Helen has combined that industry experience with further study in Sustainable Business Leadership at the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership, while working directly with professional dancers and leading ballet companies to understand what dancers actually need from their clothing and tights.
Today, she is an Advisor to the MA Fashion Business programme at the University of Salford, contributing to final MA project judging and working with Manchester Fashion Week. In 2026, she also spoke at One Dance UK’s Body Perspectives: Re-evaluating the Ideal, held in partnership with the National Institute of Dance Medicine and Science (NIDMS), sharing practical examples of how brands can help create positive change within dance.
It all feeds back into how we approach Imperfect Pointes: combining product knowledge, responsible business thinking and what we continue to learn directly from the people who wear our dancewear.
Our values
What we stand for
From the beginning, we have believed dancewear should perform beautifully, last well and work for more dancers. We have always made considered choices around materials, production and waste, designed with inclusivity in mind, and tried to be open about how our products are made and where we can still improve.
Our journey so far
Building Imperfect Pointes since 2020
2020Imperfect Pointes begins
During the first UK lockdown, founder Helen Banks turned a side hustle into a brand after being made redundant from ASICS.
Our first campaign was shot at Manchester's Victoria Baths — setting the tone for a dancewear brand that wanted to do things differently from the start.
2021Onto a bigger stage
Mayara Magri, Principal of The Royal Ballet, joined us as Brand Ambassador for a year-long collaboration that introduced Imperfect Pointes to a much wider international audience.
The partnership included a three-piece activewear capsule created with the Royal Ballet and Opera.
2022Rethinking ballet tights
We partnered with hosiery brand Swedish Stockings to launch our first recycled convertible ballet tights, in three colours including skin-tone shades.
We wanted to show what a small independent brand could do — and push the wider industry to take dancewear sustainability seriously.
That same year, Scottish Ballet chose our tights for The Snow Queen, and has used them every year since.
Image: Scottish Ballet
2023Ballet doesn't have to be perfect
Our partnership with Biscuit Ballerina gave us the perfect excuse to poke fun at some of ballet’s more ridiculous expectations.
Together we made funny, memorable work that poked at ballet's conventions, said what we believe without taking ourselves too seriously and entertained dancers all over the world.
2024English National Ballet
English National Ballet switched all its performance tights to Imperfect Pointes, buying hundreds of pairs as part of its work towards becoming a more environmentally aware organisation.
Seeing our tights on one of the world's major ballet stages told us the product worked — and so did the approach behind it.
Image: English National Ballet, Nutcracker
2025We Got Boobs
We launched the We Got Boobs edit for dancers with larger breasts who had given up finding balletwear made with their bodies in mind.
Instead of a conventional campaign model, we photographed real adult community dancers and Imperfect Pointes customers — the bodies the product was actually designed for.
- 2026
The next chapter
We brought our ballet tights fully under the Imperfect Pointes name, relaunching them with an improved, gusset-free design that we now develop independently.
We also exhibited at our first global dance tradeshow, taking the brand — and the tights — to an international industry audience.
Our dancers
Real dancers, real bodies, wearing Imperfect Pointes.
Perfectly imperfect
No two dancers are the same shape, the same size, or on the same journey.
Neither is our dancewear.
Create your own dancewear
Your shape, your colours, made in Yorkshire in five weeks.
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We got boobs leotards
Dance leotards designed with a fuller bust in mind
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All leotards
Camisole to long sleeve, every colour we make.
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Mens dancewear
Tights, shorts, tops and leotards, built for male dancers.
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