If you are looking to take a fashionable step into spring, let your shoes lead the way.

Sleek, sophisticated and ladylike, the pointy-toe shoe is coming back strong, pushing several seasons' worth of chunky platforms toward the back of the closet.

The narrowed point, part of the retro-feminine trend drawing on the 1960s, has trickled down from the designer world to the mainstream market, said Gregg Andrews, fashion creative director at Nordstrom, and will be a silhouette to wear to look well-dressed and on-trend for spring.

"It looks so fresh," he said. "It feels right with everything that's going on in fashion."

The classic, versatile style, last a must-have in the "Sex and the City" era, is enjoying an updated return to the spotlight in a burst of colors and with decorations such as pretty bows and tougher-looking studs.

"When you think of the pointed-toe shoe, you think of Audrey Hepburn and Jacqueline Kennedy," Andrews said. "You think of those very famous fashion icons from the 1960s, but then you tweak it and you make it very 21st century."

Decades ago, women stepped out in black or white patent leather, he said. "Now we're seeing it in a whole myriad of colors and seeing everything from nude all the way into bright highlighter colors, and of course, black is still there," he said.

If you are a newcomer to the silhouette, stylist and shoe fanatic Stacy London believes there is no better place to start than the classic pointy-toe stiletto.

"It's the basic shoe for any woman's wardrobe," said London, who says that a line-lengthening pointy toe punctuates at least one-quarter of her shoe collection, now approaching 500 pairs.

"There's nothing it can't go with, and it does literally add a little bit of height and class to any outfit," she said. "It makes you look taller, longer, leaner and more graceful."

At Narciso Rodriguez's New York Fashion Week show last month, pointy-toe heels, including ankle-strap and bootie versions, walked the runway. To him, the style is sexy, sensual and no-nonsense. Of all of the shoe silhouettes he has designed, the pointed toe is the most flattering on a woman's foot, he said.

"It's great when you want to look sleek and pulled together," Rodriguez said.

He added: "There is something about it that naturally looks correct."

The shoes that Rodriguez has turned out for the last several seasons also have single soles, which are more delicate that the thicker ones popular with platforms. He was inspired not by Jackie O but by looks worn by 1990s' style stars Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, for whom he crafted her wedding look, and Kate Moss.

"Now it's really become more the thing that you will see on everyone's runways," he said. "It's great to see it again. It looks so smart."

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