Cannes is a place where actors go to be taken seriously as artists. On the Promenade de la Croisette, you are not just a famous person with an A24 contract, you are a film darling, a thespian, an ascendant star of the silver screen. It means people wear long dresses and statement necklaces and old-fashioned opera gloves – clothing which clings to the stolid conventions of the beau monde. It helps that Cannes takes up the same mental space as Monaco, used as a docking station for super yachts and not much else. But this year there is a set of attendees who seem set on sullying the festival’s unspoken dress code because they have (gasp!) exposed their bras in front of some of the world’s nerdiest film journalists.
Sydney Sweeney wore a milk-hued Miu Miu negligée which had been cut to reveal at least ¾ of a pale-blue bra beneath; Scarlett Johansson wore a pale pink Prada gown with a visible, spaghetti-strapped brassiere; and Cindy Bruna wore a polka-dot Vivienne Westwood dress with two semi-circles of a corset poking forth. The whole thing pokes at the idea of a fashion faux-pas, traditionally slandered on the sidebar of shame. “Bra peeking out at Cannes??? Whomst is her stylist,” someone said of Sweeney’s look, which is reminiscent of one of Donald Trump’s most astute observations: “Barney Frank looked disgusting – nipples protruding – in his blue shirt before Congress. Very very disrespectful.”
Irina Shayk – who has used Cannes as an opportunity to rebrand herself as Julia Fox with leather bandeaus and midriff-baring Mowaolola skirts – did not look like whoever Barney Frank is, but she did look like she was at a different event. Perhaps the VMAs or an Intimissimi store activation. Dressed in a sheer slip with her Gucci bra, knickers AND socks exposed, Shayk managed to make the others look like a couple of Cromwellian-era Puritans at some kind of village sing-song – compounding a now-extinct Cannes tradition where Brigitte Bardot would parade on the beach in low-cut bikinis and Alain Delon in his budgie smugglers. All this is to say: “We are rapidly cruising towards a celeb showing up fully nude on the red carpet,” as celeb-style oracle Emily Kirkpate noted. “And I can’t wait.”
