Though the Cannes Film Festival is known for many things, its archaic dress code has become something of a talking point in recent years.
Since its beginnings in 1939, in response to political interference in the Venice Film Festival—a veto from Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler prevented the French war drama, La Grande Illusion, from winning that year—Cannes has billed itself as Europe’s premier showcase for cinema. Set against the sun-and-sea backdrop of one of the French Riviera’s most famous resort towns, its rules about dressing are born of the long-ago eveningwear norms for guests at the luxury hotels and casinos that line Cannes’s charming streets. For men, that means a jacket and tie were standard, while the expectations for women involved high heels and long dresses.
In 1946, when the festival launched officially (World War II resulted in a seven-year gap between inception and opening ceremony), the highly regulated approach to after-hours dressing wasn’t unusual. Still, even in the early days of Cannes, there were rule-breakers.
Never one to adhere to conventions, Pablo Picasso enjoyed a screening of Henri-Georges Clouzot’s The Wages of Fear in shearling. Tropic of Cancer author Henry Miller served as a juror in 1960, but refused to alter his wardrobe and was thereby ejected from screenings due to his lack of a dinner jacket, proving his style was as nonconformist as his writing.
Each decade, a new generation of red carpet rebels comes to the festival and decides to do their own thing. There are the fashion absurdists (French comedian Colouche ditching the tux for a playful drag moment with Beatrice Dalle in 1986), the heel averse (Kristen Stewart ditching her Louboutins at the premiere of Blackkklansman in 2018 in deference to the dress code), and even the occasional nudist—you try telling Cicciolina she ought to cover up.
