Misty Copeland uses high fashion to flawlessly re-create Degas' ballerinas

Misty Copeland has been hailed as a thoroughly modern ballerina, but as her re-creations of Edgar Degas' iconic dancers show, she knows how to nail the classic look, too.

Dressed in Oscar de la Renta, Alexander McQueen and other pretty pastel couture, Copeland used high fashion to flawlessly re-create artist Edgar Degas' portraits and sculptures of ballerinas for the March issue of Harpers Bazaar.

The photoshoot celebrates an upcoming exhibition at the New York Museum of Modern Art called "Edgar Degas: A Strange New Beauty," which will feature some of the ballet artwork Degas created between the 1860s and his death in 1917.

See also: Misty Copeland mania: 7 more times the ballerina broke boundaries

The stunning photo spread is just the latest achievement propelling Copeland's rising star. Last summer, she was the first African-American woman to be named a principal dancer at the American Ballet Theatre, a far cry from her humble beginnings in Southern California, where she spent some of her childhood in a welfare motel with her mother and five siblings.

Though Copeland has called herself an "unlikely ballerina," she said she sees some of herself in Degas' timeless art, particularly in one of his most iconic works: Little Dancer Aged Fourteen.

See also: Misty Copeland gave Jimmy Kimmel a ballet lesson

"I definitely feel like I can see myself in that sculpture—she just seems content but also reserved," Copeland told Harpers Bazaar. "I was really shy and introverted at that age. I don't even have an image in my head of what I remember a ballerina being or existing before I took a ballet class. Ballet was just the one thing that brought me to life."