On Pointe: This Former Tomboy Knows Her Tutus

Rene Fletcher didn’t dance when she was a child—instead she played soccer and hung out with her three brothers. Now she’s surrounded by frilly pink tutus, rhinestone studded costumes and handmade Irish dance shoes. She’s the proud owner of in Fenton.

She got into the dancewear business by way of her two daughters, who both love dance and gymnastics. She said her first daughter was only two when she announced she wanted to be a dancer. Fletcher said she didn’t give the request much thought at first, but after her daughter started using the back of the couch as a balance beam, she decided to give in and found a class for her.

“This was a new world for me,” she said.

Fletcher may have been a tomboy as a child, but she also managed to learn her away around needle and thread from her grandmother, who taught her to sew.

“She was a great seamstress. I learned by osmosis,” she quipped. These skills came in handy later in life when her daughter’s dance costumes never seemed to fit right. She started tailoring her daughter’s costumes, then worked on costumes for her daughter’s friends. Pretty soon she was handling alterations for all the girls in the studio.

Fletcher claims that she isn’t as good at sewing as her grandmother was, but that she makes up for it by have a really great sewing machine. It’s obvious that she’s being shy about her skills after she describes taking a delicate costume completely apart in order to resize it.

She eventually decided to take her alteration service out of her home and turned it into a complete dancewear business. In 2009, she bought out Principal Dance Boutique in High Ridge, then relocated the shop’s inventory and equipment to 948 Brookwood Center in Fenton. She now has four employees and a few more who work part-time in the summer.

On Pointe Dancewear specializes in clothes for dancers, gymnasts, cheerleaders and figure skaters. They are the only store in St. Louis that sells footwear for Irish dancers. And of course, they offer alterations, which Fletcher handles herself in a corner of the shop.

It’s her skill as a seamstress that sets the shop apart from other dancewear supply stores. She understands how difficult it can be to get costumes to fit just right, having gone through years of dance classes and recitals with her own girls who are now in their teens.

Besides tailoring costumes, Fletcher and her staff can do custom embroidery and add rhinestones to clothing. The shop has a six color embroidery machine and anything that can fit in the machine can be stitched with a name or logo right in the shop. Fletcher is happy to lend a helping hand to fundraisers and said they recently embroidered 100 headbands for a school group to sell. She discounts the fundraiser items, which allows the group to make a larger profit from their final sale.

Fletcher said she can customize blankets, backpacks, gym bags, jackets, shirts and headbands—items don’t need to be dance related or purchased at her shop for the embroidery service. Prices start at $7 and some items can even be done while you wait.