This year at Cannes, nudity is definitively out − and so are long, billowy gowns.
After the international film festival announced a new set of dress code rules this year, Halle Berry, who is serving on the competition jury, revealed she had to ditch a pre-planned outfit.
“I had an amazing dress by Gupta that I cannot wear tonight because it’s too big of a train,” she told Variety, referring to celebrity designer and couturier Gaurav Gupta.
The new rules, posted on the festival’s website, expressly prohibit “voluminous outfits,” particularly if they have “a large train,” arguing they “hinder the proper flow of traffic of guests and complicate seating in the theater.”
Cannes Film Festival bans nudity after Ye, Bianca Censori’s Grammys stunt. Is it a new era?
The new rules also took aim at the scantily clad, prohibiting nudity on the carpet or in any area of the festival − a seeming check on the new trend of “nude dresses” that are a garment in name only, often figure-hugging and see-through.
“For decency reasons, nudity is prohibited on the Red Carpet, as well as in any other area of the Festival,” the rules read.
The move comes after Bianca Censori made waves at the Grammys in a nearly entirely see-through dress. Censori, who arrived alongside her husband Ye, the rapper previously known as Kanye West, caught a large degree of backlash for the fashion choice, with many categorizing it as a sexist stunt.
Halle Berry’s cutout dress at the Met Gala had the internet up in arms. Why?
Berry, for one, is not opposed to the nudity ban.
“I’m not going to break the rules,” she said of her outfit change. “The nudity part is also probably a good rule.” Her comments come in the wake of a mini-outcry over her recent Met Gala look, which featured highly revealing cutouts in her LaQuan Smith gown. Not quite a full “naked dress,” it left little to the imagination, a sartorial choice some blasted.
Beyond the more propriety-focused guidelines the festival has imposed − in alignment with French law, they say − the nude dress trend may just be out of style.
“The only thing you can count on in fashion is that what goes up must come down,” Lorynn Divita, a professor of apparel design and merchandising and the author of the book “Fashion Forecasting,” previously told USA TODAY. “Eventually, people will get tired and the cycle will change.”
“We have gotten to a point with clubwear that we are so used to tight, revealing clothing that we’re fatigued of it,” she added. “We’ve seen it. We’ve been there. We’ve done that.”
Contributing: Charles Trepany
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Halle Berry Cannes dress axed over new red carpet fashion rules
