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On the Boulevard de la Croisette, your choice of red carpet footwear is not merely a menial stylistic decision, but one that (dependent on your selection) holds the power to alter the trajectory of your Cannes Film Festival experience.
Of all the revered red carpets to walk, the über-glamorous procession along the Côte d’Azur has the most sartorial reverence—and the strictest dress code.
Until recently, wearing stilettos was compulsory for female attendees, with the rule set to ensure a veneer of elegance and opulence was maintained.
In 2016 and 2018, Julia Roberts and Kristen Stewart respectively fiercely defied this mandatory dress code by taking off their towering heels mid-carpet, walking up the steps of the Palais des Festivals et des Congrès completely barefoot.
Now, in 2023 actresses Jennifer Lawrence and Isabelle Huppert are following in their contemporary’s footsteps by taking two very different approaches to the divisive footwear ruling, offering a sartorial coup de théâtre just as entertaining as the events in the films premiering at the coveted festival.
For Lawrence, her defiant-esque move to poke fun at the film festival’s marred history of footwear transpired through subtle undertones. At the premiere of Anatomy Of A Fall—a film Lawrence has no affiliation with but attended to guerilla market Bread and Roses, a documentary she produced—Lawrence literally stopped traffic in a crimson Christian Dior Couture gown.
As she descended the movie theatre and cinephile heaven, she flashed eager photographers a glimpse at her black leather flip-flops that peeked out from underneath her gown.
Elsewhere across the French Riviera, Huppert attended the Killers Of The Flower Moon premiere in a more conspicuous way of paying homage to the polarizing requirement. Stepping out in a black lace Balenciaga dress, Huppert subversively opted for a shoeless look by wearing a pair of anatomic nude heels.
Featuring toe indents, the result was a witticism that undoubtedly highlighted the double standard of forcing female participants to wear high heels. As Stewart said herself after she rebelled against the red-carpet rule: “If you’re not asking guys to wear heels and a dress, you cannot ask me either.”
In the words of Maire Antionette: Let them all wear flats.
