So, What Happened to the Cannes ‘Naked Dressing’ Ban?

If the Cannes Film Festival intended to tone down the red carpet this year, the celebrity style set clearly didn’t get the memo. Despite restrictions on revealing looks implemented by the festival in 2025, the red carpet has remained as sheer and skin-baring as ever.

The Croisette is no stranger to risqué fashion—no matter how hard the organizers try to persuade attendees in the opposite direction. Throughout the event’s history, the red carpet has been home to provocative style moments, like the Emilio Pucci dress Jane Birkin wore to a 1969 event in Paris she attended with Serge Gainsbourg. (Birkin turned the design backward to create its now-famous plunging neckline.)

It was that very dress that inspired the lace Schiaparelli gown Bella Hadid wore at the festival—one of her many, mostly vintage, looks—complete with the same navel-grazing neckline. Perhaps invoking old-world cinema suddenly makes a sheer dress feel more acceptable?

Elsewhere at this year’s festival, stars offered tasteful takes on sheer formal wear. Kristen Stewart, a perennial Cannes rule-breaker, wore a sheer Chanel skirt set with on-trend jazz shoes, while Riley Keough slipped into the nude look that opened Matthieu Blazy’s spring/summer 2026 Chanel couture show. Daisy Edgar-Jones, in a dreamy Balenciaga number with cutouts, and Demi Moore, who channeled her 2003 The Matrix Reloaded premiere look in fairy-tale Gucci, also embraced subtly revealing silhouettes.

So, what changed?

Not much. Effectively, the festival’s 2026 dress policy is consistent with the rules it instituted last year. “For decency reasons, nudity is prohibited on the red carpet, as well as in any other area of the festival,” the dress code section of its FAQ reads. “Voluminous outfits, in particular those with a large train, that hinder the proper flow of traffic of guests and complicate seating in the theater are not permitted.”

Many guests have disregarded the directive on both fronts. As much as Cannes has attempted to crack down on overtly provocative dressing, sheer fabrics and illusion gowns remain everywhere, while dramatic trains—like the one seen on Moore’s iridescent creation—are still very much alive on the Croisette.

Demi Moore in Gucci at the La Vie d’une Femme screening.

The happenings at Cannes feel decidedly removed from the wider trends seen during awards season. Over the past two years, stars have largely abandoned sheer dressing for polished Old Hollywood looks, 1950s and ’60s necklines, and empire waists.

Daisy Edgar-Jones in Balenciaga at the Fjord screening.

It might be best to put this year’s rule-breaking in the context of the festival’s track record in governing dress. Over the years, the institution has implemented a series of guidelines, including eveningwear specifics for women and a “no flats” rule.

Stewart famously protested the latter in 2018 when she removed her high heels to go barefoot on the red carpet, calling the policy “outdated.” For a premiere this year, she wore a knit Chanel dress by Blazy with black lace-up sneakers, a choice that—however cool—likely wasn’t on the organizers’ mood board. (The festival has since allowed flats, as long as they are “elegant.”)

Kristen Stewart in Chanel at the Full Phil screening.

Suffice it to say, skin-revealing fashions are likely to always have a place on the red carpet. But it’s plausible Cannes—and all its rules—has propelled stars to approach revealing dressing with a more refined sensibility rather than abandon it altogether.

Long live the reign of the naked dress.