The Cannes Film Festival's long standing, much-debated heels custom is fizzling out. Stylists and stars have mixed feelings.
Heels Were Once Mandatory at Cannes—Should They Still Be?
It’s one of the Cannes Film Festival’s most memorable red carpet moments: In 2018, actor Kristen Stewart was attending the festival’s premiere of BlacKKKlansman, when she ditched her sky-high Christian Louboutin pumps midway through walking the step-and-repeat. The move instantly made headlines. The festival has a longstanding, though unofficial, rule that women must wear heels on the carpet, and many saw Stewart’s impromptu undressing as an act of defiance. “I feel like you can’t ask people that any more,” Stewart said in 2017. “If you’re not asking guys to wear heels and a dress, you cannot ask me either.”
Stewart wasn’t the first star to make such a statement. Back in 2016, Julia Roberts and Sasha Lane went barefoot at Cannes as well. But heels still dominate the Cannes red carpet. The festival kicked off yesterday, and with it, stars like Jodie Foster and Melanie Laurent showed up in towering stilettos. This very well may have been their choice, but the bigger question is: should they have to?
The Cannes red carpet heel rule has never appeared in writing, rather it has been more of an unspoken requirement. While formal dress codes have been explicitly stated on invitations, no mention of heeled footwear has ever been codified. But Cannes, even in the world of award shows, requires a heightened level of glamour. “The [Cannes] carpet is the carpet,” Chloë Sevigny, a frequent festival attendee, tells Vogue. “Being in France, there’s a level of elegance that’s encouraged—expected, maybe. But it is a kind of old-fashioned and archaic rule. Women should be able to wear what they want to wear.”
This story originally appeared on: Vogue - Author:Christian Allaire
