Become a Vogue Business Member to receive unlimited access to Member-only reporting and insights, our Beauty and TikTok Trend Trackers, Member-only newsletters and exclusive event invitations.
From Bella Hadid in see-through Saint Laurent (2024) to Elle Fanning in a dramatic Alexander McQueen train (2023), some of the most memorable looks from the Cannes Film Festival in recent years have been voluminous or sheer. But on Monday, just a day before the Cannes Film Festival opened, organisers updated the dress code for the main venue, the Grand Théâtre Lumière. Now, anyone wearing sheer clothing or large trains won’t be able to walk the carpet at this year’s event.
The dress code section of the Cannes website now reads: “For decency reasons, nudity is prohibited on the red carpet, as well as in any other area of the festival. Voluminous outfits, in particular those with a large train, that hinder the proper flow of traffic of guests and complicate seating in the theatre are not permitted. The festival welcoming teams will be obligated to prohibit red carpet access to anyone not respecting these rules.”
“A lot of the stylists that I’ve been talking to are really freaked out,” says cultural critic Louis Pisano, who writes newsletter Discoursted and is packing for Cannes when we speak. He flags that Cannes always been conservative and that, in recent years, they’ve been clamping down on the rules. First came the mandatory heels rule, made apparent when women were denied entry to the festival in 2015 for their flat footwear, then the 2018 selfie ban. (“Elegant shoes and sandals with or without a heel” are now permitted, per the dress code guidance.) Still, many are surprised, and this year’s last-minute ban on sheer and extravagant looks has stylists scrambling to adapt.
Stylist Rose Forde, who styles talent including The Substance director Coralie Fageat, actor Britt Lower and actor Emma D’Arcy, found out about the change via social media, before a client reached out about it. “Cannes has always been a stickler for the rules and enforcing etiquette with dressing, so I am not totally surprised. I have spent many an evening Googling ‘is X allowed on the Cannes carpet’ in the past, even with menswear looks,” Forde says.
It’s understood that the banning of large trains and skirts is meant to speed up the flow of red carpet arrivals, as people wearing large gowns take a while to get down the carpet, and talents reportedly have a fixed 10-minute slot. In recent years, the carpet has become crowded with influencers looking to disrupt and cause a scene by wearing the “craziest, most insane, biggest thing they can find”, says Pisano, who has attended the festival for the last 14 years. “They take up the most space on the red carpet and everybody gets clogged up,” he says. “You’ve got 2,000, 3,000 people that have to get into this theatre.”
link