cannes 2025 and the red carpet crackdown: fashion, power, and the politics of control
Each May, the Cannes Film Festival transforms the French Riviera into a spectacle of cinematic prestige, glamour, and global fascination. Since its inception in 1946. Cannes has stood as more than a film festival - it is a cultural institution, a proving ground for auteurs, and a beacon of global style. Over the decades, its red carpet has become a ritualized stage, where film stars, fashion houses, and photographers converge in a theatre of beauty, power, and performance, where the boundaries of art and image blur.
The fashion at Cannes has always told its own stories. From Grace Kelly’s classic gowns to Rihanna’s sculptural statements, the red carpet has evolved into a global stage for self-expression and visual storytelling. It is not just a photo op - it is a stage for self-invention. While inside, the films play on the silver screen, out front, identity gets styled, messed with, and served in 360 HD. It is where tradition gets poked at, where a dress can say “don´t mess with me” just as easily as it says “Chanel loan”. So with every year, the parade of couture carries not just fabric, but symbolism: of visibility, freedom, audacity, and identity, obviously.
But in 2025, the fantasy frayed. Just days before opening night, Cannes dropped a new dress code: no sheer gowns, no giant silhouettes, no drama in train form. Suddenly, the red carpet had rules - and not the fun kind. Designers were fuming, stylists scrambling, fashion people whispering, “Is this a joke?” Well… It was not. What looked like a style memo read more like a power move: A quiet clampdown on who gets to take up space, and how. Underneath the silk and tulle, a bigger story was. unfolding - about control, visibility, and whose bodies still make people nervous.
Cannes dropped a new dress code: no sheer gowns (©picture: Edie Lou)
A History of Glam - and Rebellion
To understand what Cannes stands for, we have to go back to the beginning. From the outset, it was not just about silver screen - it was about using art, cinema as a unifying force in a divided Europe. An organisation rooted in freedom, peace, and the belief that culture and art could bring people together where politics failed.
It has always been about more than cinema. The festival was born out of protest. In 1938, French officials were outraged when the Venice Film Festival, founded 1932 by Giuseppe Volpi, - then under Mussolini´s control - awarded its top prize to a Nazi propaganda film and snubbed Jean Renoir´s La Grande Illusion, a humanist French masterpiece. The response came from Jean Zay, France´s Minister of National Education and Fine Arts: a new international film festival, built on freedom and cultural integrity, far from fascist influence. Alongside historian Philippe Erlanger and cultural advisor Georges Huisman, Zay laid the foundation for what would become Cannes.
The first edition of the Cannes Film Festival was scheduled to open on September 1, 1939. The program had been finalized, featuring films from countries including France, the United States, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, Poland, Hungary, Sweden, the Netherlands, Chechoslovakia, and Luxemburg etc. Notable films selected for the competition included The Wizard of Oz by Victor Fleming (USA), Union Pacific by Cecil B. DeMille (USA), Goodbye, Mr Chips by Sam Wood (UK), The Four Feathers by Zoltan Korda (UK), Lenin in October by Mikhail Romm (USSR), La Loi du Nord by Jaques Feyder (France), Two Girls on the Street by André de Toth (Hungary) and The Magic House by Otakar Vávra (Czechoslovakia).
International guests had already arrived in Cannes with Hollywood stars such as Gary Cooper, Cary Grant, Tyrone Power, Norma Shearer, Mae West, and George Raft traveling aboard an ocean liner chartered by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM). The opening film was set to be The Hunchback of Notre Dame, directed by William Dieterle and starring Charles Laughton and Maureen O´Hara. However, on the morning of the planned opening, Germany invaded Poland, triggering the immediate escalation of geopolitical tensions across Europe. Within days, France and Britain declared war. The festival was canceled before any screenings took place. The only film that was privately screened during this period was The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
The 26 films selected for the 1939 festival remained unseen by the public until decades later. In 2002, a retrospective jury awarded the Palme d´Or for the 1939 selection to Union Pacific by Cecil B. DeMille, a tribute to the lineup, to a cultural and political statement. A deliberate stand against fascism, propaganda, and censorship.
Note from 1939. The decision of the French Government not to participate at the Venice Film Festival anymore. (© of the picture belongs to the rightful owner)
Cannes’ official debut was on September 20, 1946, seven years after its original launch was halted by war. Organized by France´s Ministry of National Education and Fine Arts, and led by Georges Huisman, the first full edition unfolded in the Casino Municipal of Cannes. Twent-one countries participated - many of them former Allied nations - sending films, filmmakers, and diplomats to the French Riviera to reconnect. After years of conflict and silence, Cannes reemerged as more than a film festival. It was a declaration: cinema would help rebuild what war had broken. Since the early 1950s, Cannes has taken place in May, a strategic shift designed to distinguish it from the Venice Film Festival and position it at the start of the international film calendar.
Since then, Cannes has evolved into the most prestigious film festival in the world. But even amid the formal wear and fanfare, it has always carried a rebellious streak. It is where the Nouvelle Vague first crashed ashore in the late 1950s and early `60s, led by filmmakers like Jean-Luc Godard, Francois Truffaut, and Agnès Varda. These directors rejected the polished conventions of traditional French cinema in favour to jump cuts, handheld cameras, and raw, often political storytelling. It wasn´t just a stylistic shift - it was a revolution in how stories could be told. At Cannes, the Nouvelle Vague wasn´t just welcomed; it was amplified. The festival became a rare platform where youthful dissent, formal innovation, and anti-authoritarian ideas could take center stage. It helped establish Cannes not only as a showcase for film, but as a global stage for creative freedom.
BB
But the postwar 1950’s Europe was still shaped by conservative ideals - especially around how women should behave in public. It was an era when women’s public presence was still tightly regulated - through expectations of modesty, reserve, and carefully curated femininity-. Then BB strolled in - barefoot, sun-kissed, and completely unbothered. Her casual, confident presence - photographed in bikini, strolling barefoot, laughing openly - signalled a move towards individual autonomy, female visibility, and sexual liberation. At a time when the red carpet was still formal and controlled, Bardot showed that being seen did not have to mean being staged.
In 1953, Brigitte Bardot was photographed in a bikini on the beaches of Cannes in a shoot designed to promote Manina, la fille sans voiles (Manina, the Girl in the Bikini). At that time, the bikini was still seen as provocative and probably the most scandalous item in the world. Bardot´s relaxed appearance challenged social norms and the photos caused the same effect like the Bikini itself, “the most important thing since the atom bomb” (Diana Vreeland).
Manina, La Fille Sans Voiles (© of the original picture belongs to the rightful owner)
At Cannes, a festival that had been founded as a cultural response to fascist control over artistic freedom, Bardot´s presence echoed the festival´s founding spirit: freedom, visibility, and self-expression. In retrospect, her impact was not only aesthetic, obviously, it was symbolic and structural. Her presence helped shift how Cannes functioned culturally. Before her, Cannes was about films, directors, juries. It was a closed system: you were there to present a film or watch one. Period. Publicity was formal and appearances were controlled. She changed the narrative. She blurred the boundary between spectacle and presence itself - and she became the most photographed person there. From that point on, Cannes was no longer just a film festival. It became a global stage for image-making, cultural performance, and social visibility.
BB changed the narrative by showing that a woman becomes a subject through unapologetic selfhood. In a space that expected formal performance, her refusal to conform was a form of rebellion. By simply existing outside the narrow frame that had been assigned to women - particularly in elite, male-dominated cultural spaces - she expanded the possibilities for how a woman could be seen, and on whose terms. Physically present, unfiltered, and unconcerned with formal approval. Her visibility changed the culture of the festival. The 2025 ban on sheer fabric directly contradicts that legacy. It places new limits on how bodies can be seen and under what conditions. What Bardot made possible - ease, autonomy, visibility without permission - is now being reserved.
Jane Birkin with Serge Gainsbourg, Paris 1969 (© of the original picture belongs to the rightful owner)
Jane
So, if Bardot made her mark on the beaches of the Croisette then Jane Birkin brought that very same spirit onto the red carpet. In 1969, she arrived at the Paris premiere of Slogan alongside Serge Gainsbourg in a sheer white crochet dress - braless and pretty much transparent. We all know that picture…It was a look that seemed sooo accidental, but it registered immediately as a shock to the system. Just as her sheer black mini-dress, paired with her signature straw basket and the same casual indifference. By 1974, Birkin brought this aesthetic to Cannes red carpet. She wore an asymmetrical gown, cut dramatically high on the side and of course with her straw basket. At a time when red carpet fashion remained closely tied to tradition and formality, her appearance - again - stood apart. It was a moment that unsettled the expectations of one of cimena´s most formal stages through simplicity. In doing so, Birkin redefined what trés chic could look like. Her choice of garment rejected the hierarchy of couture that Cannes had long demanded. It was refusal to pretend, delivered with absolute calm and non-chalance.
What made it truly disruptive, though, was that, just like Bardot before her, she was not trying to be disruptive. She was not there to make a point, provoke a scandal, or perform a persona. She was simply herself - unfiltered. In a cultural space that had long dictated how women should appear, move, and behave, that kind of presence was disarming. The cultural impact was undeniable. Not to mention that that same year, she and Serge Gainsbourg released Je t´aime … moi non plus, the breathy, explicit single that would be banned by the BBC and other radio stations across Europe, banned from selling, and condemned by the Vatican. In the cultural context of 1969, female sexuality was still expected to be controlled, framed, and explained - especially in public media. Women could be sexual, but only if that sexuality served a story, usually a male one.
Jane Birkin with Serge Gainsbourg in Cannes, 1974 (© of the original picture belongs to the rightful owner)
Birkin´s appearance in her sheer mini dresses and the song Je t´aime … moi non plus broke that pattern. A woman fully inhabiting her body and presence without offering it up for male consumption. Her voice does not serve anyone else´s desire; it inhabits her own. Sure, she obviously did not reject femininity - she reclaimed it by refusing to filter it through the male gaze. She detached visibility from availability, sexuality from sexualization. These were not calculated provocations, but they had lasting effect.
Though British by birth, Birkin came to embody something deeply French: a woman who belonged to no one, who carried her sensuality lightly, who turned self-possession into a kind of iconic aesthetic. She wasn´t trying to represent anything, and yet she became an emblem - of liberation, identity, nonchalance, of a culture that claimed to value beauty as a kind of freedom. It represented freedom. And a role model for many women in the world. The looks she introduced are now cited as foundational moments in the evolution of what would later be called the “naked dress”. The aesthetic she defined has since been revisited and reinterpreted by figures such as Kate Moss, Dakota Johnson, Hari Nef, and many others, in whom the spirit of Birkin´s approach - unforced, self-possessed, and visually articulate - continues to live on.
Cultural Hegemony
So, when Cannes announced this year that sheer garments and oversized silhouettes would be banned from the red carpet, it did more than restrict clothing. It violated not only Cannes´ historical commitment to freedom, but also the legacy of Jane Birkin herself and the woman’s right to appear as she is, without being reduced to a symbol of someone else´s comfort. It reasserted control over who gets to appear, and how. In Gramscian terms, this is not just a dress code; it is an act of cultural hegemony: the quiet, persistent enforcement of dominant values under the guise of taste and tradition. The red carpet has long been framed as a space for creativity and glamour, but this year, it has become a site of formal restriction. What was once an arena for self-expression and visual experimentation is now defined by rules designed to constrain. The garments that were banned - transparent dresses and expansive silhouettes - are not only stylistic choices; they are forms of presence. It is not just regulating clothing - it is regulating aesthetic codes tied to identity.
Sheer fabrics and oversized silhouettes aren´t neutral fashion choices; they are used as forms of self-expression, especially for women, who have long used fashion as a means of reclaiming agency, sensuality, and presence. And of course, queer people, especially non-binary, trans, and gender-nonconforming individuals, who frequently use exaggerated silhouettes, layering, or sheerness to play with - and challenge - gender norms. When these styles are banned, it sends a message: the kinds of bodies and identities most often associated with these forms of dress are not welcome unless they conform. So while the language of the ban might sound neutral, its impact is clearly not. It disproportionately affects those who use fashion as a language of identity, rather than as silent compliance.
The language used by organisers - phrases like “maintaining elegance” and “upholding tradition” - suggests a neutral concern with order. But as political theorist Antonio Gramsci warned, power often works most effectively when it appears natural, when it hides behind cultural norms and common sense. In this case, what is framed as elegance is, in practice, a demand for conformity. The dress code not just manages the fabric; it manages identity. Of course!
Hari Nef in Cannes, 2023 (© of the original picture belongs to the rightful owner)
Cannes vs. Its Own History
This makes Cannes´ decision not only controversial, but historically ironic. The festival was originally founded in 1939 to resist the politicization of culture, especially how the Venice Film Festival had been taken over by fascist governments to promote films aligned with authoritarian values. Cannes was created as a space of artistic independence, freedom of expression, international openness, and a celebration of culture unbound by propaganda or state control. But now, in 2025, by implementing a restrictive dress code, Cannes is ironically reproducing the same type of control it once stood against: regulating how people appear based on ideological standards.
This is not only a betrayal of designers, filmmakers, performers, or attendees - it is a betrayal of Cannes´ own founding principles. A festival built on the defence of freedom has chosen to enforce limitation and exclusion. That is not just hypocrisy - it is institutional failure. Cannes hasn´t just failed the artists it was meant to support. It has failed itself.
Cultural institutions like Cannes do not stand outside politics - they help shape it. They construct public imagination, signal social values, and define who belongs in the cultural future they claim to curate. By banning the very forms of self-presentation that were once championed on its red carpet, Cannes has not only abandoned artistic freedom - it has turned against the foundation of its own identity. In rejecting sheer dresses and dramatic silhouettes, the festival implicitly casts icons like Brigitte Bardot and Jane Birkin - two of the most enduring figures in French cultural memory - as vulgar, inelegant, or out of bounds. This is not simply a fashion decision. It is an erasure of women´s contribution to cultural history, a betrayal of feminism, and an insult to the very aesthetic language that helped define postwar France.
And let´s be honest: to censor what Birkin once wore, is not just poor judgment - it is an attack on the values she stood for: independence, sensuality, self-possession. Birkin was not merely a style icon; she was part of France´s cultural inheritance, a symbol of artistic and personal freedom that transcended borders. To restrict what she once embodied is to deny not only her legacy, but the sprit of contemporary French identity itself. I do think, if Cannes hopes to remain vital it must remember what it was created to defend: artistic freedom, cultural dissent, and the right to appear - unfiltered and free.
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