Some years at Cannes, the Med’s most effervescent seasonal kickoff, the bubbles and spice of the social froth provide the jollity. Because, what’s not entertaining about entertainers scrambling to, around, or swiftly from this or that party-conundrum? On cue, shortly before opening night, the catalyst for the 78th Cannes Film Festival was brashly supplied by the Festival itself, when the dress edict dropped, curiously mandating no “nudity” and arguably more curiously, no “voluminous” dresses on the red carpet.
The very specific two-part edict bore more than a little mystery. No one had any plans to appear nude. Surely this was not the case with the Festival’s hard-working administration, but it was almost as if — in an attempt to curry favor with Trump 2.0 — Cannes had invited Congressional firebrand and conspiracy-theory adherent Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., to try her hand at styling global film celebrities. As entertaining a cultural clash as that would have been, that wasn’t what was happening.
But as many first thought, the edict was very much not a joke. Below, clearly not having been given enough time to execute an outfit swerve by the new code, Heidi Klum arrives at the May 13 opening of the Festival in her rule-defying, very “big” dress, revealing that high-thigh. Nudity, to boot.
A bit of history is in order regarding the “nudity” section of the edict: At fashion weeks and on literally dozens of über-fancy festival-and-charity red carpets in Europe and the States, the trend of nearly-naked dress has presented a global difficulty for some years now. The trend’s origins are murky but can well have been as simple as a glut of chiffon — a textiles manager or two forgot to shut down a few looms and they accidentally ran off a couple of million extra yards of transparency. As easily, the trend could have its origins in the design ateliers of New York and Paris as a return-to-the-body “renewal” — as if the body had suddenly packed up and left us to find some other form to drape. And what more impactful way for the body to be “back” than to be naked?
However that worked, or didn’t, as the Cannes administration busily battled the headwinds of bemusement, satire and utter confusion that the memo triggered on May 13, they were at pains to note that the rules weren’t about any of the above. Rather, they posited, it was about adherence to “French law.” The implication was: French law legislates against “total” nudity in public.
Below, in a most demonstrative and tactile encounter-of-approval, Mrs. Daniella Pick Tarantino, far right, greets Cannes’ Delegate General Thierry Frémaux while showing off her classic Hollywood-silver back-less sheath. Facing the audience at the front of the stage, Mrs. Tarantino’s noted husband performs his assigned medieval Town Crier function to announce that the Festival is open.
No word yet on whether the Mrs. Tarantino’s silver sheath landed on the right, or the wrong, side of the “nudity” clauses in the new Cannes law. But Delegate General Frémaux, for one, seems pleased enough with his inspection of the dress and its wearer to grip her elbows and smile broadly, and that’s not a bad sign for the future. Put differently, “nudity” — whatever that means — may be officially out. But! According to this bellwether encounter between members of 2025 Cannes stage royalty in the very moment of the Festival’s opening, skin, qua skin, is definitely in. All is not lost, in other words. The South of France remains the South of France, skin-wise.
A bit of history is in order regarding the “nudity” section of the edict: At fashion weeks and on literally dozens of über-fancy festival-and-charity red carpets in Europe and the States, the trend of nearly-naked dress has presented a global difficulty for some years now. The trend’s origins are murky but can well have been as simple as a glut of chiffon — a textiles manager or two forgot to shut down a few looms and they accidentally ran off a couple million extra yards of transparency. As easily, the trend could have its origins in the design ateliers of New York and Paris as a return-to-the-body “renewal” — as if the body had suddenly packed up and left us to find some other form to drape. And what more impactful way to be back than to be naked?
Below, Shanina Shaik gives a peerless master-class on the opening night red carpet in how to execute the ultra-crisp power-chignon. Dress? What dress? Is it voluminous enough to violate the new code? Who cares! As with Mrs Tarantino, this look is about skin offered by the dress, via parts of the dress that are strategically not there. Some nit-picking observers of Scrooge-like mindsets might call that “nudity,” but we’d say that was an unnecessarily narrow interpretation what the Australian model of Lithuanian, Pakistani and Saudi descent is trying to achieve. However the dress is described, it’s working like gangbusterss for Shaik.
As the Cannes administration busily battled the headwinds of bemusement, satire and utter confusion that the memo triggered on May 13, fascinatingly, they were at pains to clarify that the rules weren’t about any of the above. Rather, they posited, it was about adherence to “French law.” The implication was: French law legislates against “total” nudity in public.
After that citation of legal compliance, it was a matter of nanoseconds before the fashion world’s pundit-ocracy began bruiting that the Cannes edict’s non to nudity had come as a result of Bianca Censori’s antics for the last two years on the world’s red carpets, in costume (or absence thereof) as paraded on the arm of her personal Rasputin, husband, musician, diehard Trump supporter and self-proclaimed Adolf Hitler fan Kanye “Ye” West.
So, the Wests are to blame for the Cannes edict? Not so fast! Whatever else he has been doing, and he has been doing rather a lot, West has been really successful in rebranding himself as a social pariah. Asked another way, who in attendance to a premier or an evening awards ceremony at Cannes would even be able to think to imitate West’s partner-made-to-dress-in-nothing mannequin Censori? Correct! Exactly nobody! Cannes’ ferociously defended red carpet was safe from that sort of miscreancy from the get-go.
Pictured below: Another bellwether red-carpet moment was splashy entrance of Brazilian model Allessandra Ambrosio who, by any definition, carried an officially “big” dress. In fact, by definition, any Cannes gown requiring one or two people other than the wearer to get it right is darn big. A bit of Cannes social topography is required to understand this properly. The “styling” of celebrities is as we know a massive industry, and the stylists of Cannes are among the hardest-working in the branch. Regarded this way, we can say that the work of Cannes stylists resembles that of architects and engineers, except that in the stylists’ case the forms they drape, or undrape, are the legs, arms, heads and busts of the somewhat-famous. Even harder-working are the minions to the stylists, the hair people, the jewelry people, and not least, the tuxedo-clad gown-throwers, as pictured below.
Which brings us to Part 2 of the Cannes carpet edict. The act of forbidding dress that has been described as “voluminous” brought different set of problems to a very specific set of festival-goers, namely, the stylists and the stars and/or wannabes. Without diving too far into the muck of outfit production, the chosen ateliers and their starry begin work on their dress months in advance. Bluntly put, the rule drop on the day before the opening black-tie ceremony traditionally celebrating the lifetime achievement of a cinema stalwart — this year, the hilariously irascible Robert DeNiro, who seized his podium and, true to his Raging Bull roots, instantly began waving his fists at the Trump administration — came more than a little late for the major dressmakers and their clothes horses to change tack.
Then, there are those gowns so big that they become the wearer’s life-partner-for-the-evening. In arguably the “biggest” big gown to grace Cannes’ or any other red carpet, pictured below, China’s Wan Qian takes volume to a different plane. Obviously, Wan had zero time, or perhaps inclination, to execute a swerve from this frock, which looks as if it could accommodate six or seven of the assembled paparazzi and their ladders on its massive folds on the floor. Editorial note: We selected photographer Monica Schipper’s drone shot because it best reveals the gown’s sheer scale in comparison to the assembled paparazzi. Ms. Wan’s message is: How big is “too big” is a matter of personal taste.