Cannes is making it official: nudity and “excessively voluminous” clothing are not welcome on the red carpet of the Palais.
After a demonstrator appeared topless on the Cannes red carpet in 2022 and Bianca Censori stretched the limits with her appearance with a transparent dress at the Grammys earlier this year, the festival issued a statement in accordance with “the institutional framework” of the festival and French law.
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“This year, the Cannes Film Festival has made explicit in its charter certain rules that have long been in effect. The aim is not to regulate attire per se, but to prohibit full nudity on the red carpet, in accordance with the institutional framework of the event and French law,” said the new instructions from the festival.
In addition, the festival said that it “reserves the right to deny access to individuals whose attire could obstruct the movement of other guests or complicate seating arrangements in the screening rooms.”
Though it’s not clear whether wardrobe like Greta Gerwig’s poufy Barbie-pink ensemble with a medium-sized train would be banned, some of the longer trains can add to the traffic jam of luminaries climbing the iconic Palais steps and potentially cause a hazard.
Over the past few years, Cannes has faced controversy over its red carpet dress codes such as the requirement to wear “elegant” shoes for evening screenings. Some say the policy is unfair to women, since for many years “elegant” was synonymous with high heels, at least according to the strict Palais guards. Low heels are now more acceptable — as long as they’re not sneakers — but there are still sometimes snafus, such as when an Indigenous producer was turned away for wearing moccasins in 2022.
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