What Does the Cannes Film Festival Red Carpet Nudity Ban Mean?

This year, Cannes Film Festival has put a ban on full nudity, sheer gowns, and “voluminous” silhouettes. But dress codes are rarely only about clothes – they shape how bodies move through space and who is deemed ‘acceptable’

At this year’s Cannes Film Festival, the talk of the town has been not of the films but of a murky set of dress rules, served like a warning at the 11th hour: a ban on full nudity, sheer gowns, and “voluminous” silhouettes from the festival’s official spaces, citing, somewhat vaguely, the need to align with French law and uphold a standard of “decency”. But beneath the language of order and propriety, dress codes are rarely only about clothes. More often, they work like sticky systems of soft control, enforced through ritualised decorum and conditional hospitality, that shape how bodies move through space and who is deemed ‘acceptable’ – and, inevitably, who resists.

Click through a gallery of red carpet looks from Cannes Film Festival 2025 below:

The curious decision arrives not in a vacuum, but amid a reckoning within French cinema itself, as long-ignored allegations of sexual misconduct by powerful men – from this week’s conviction of Gérard Depardieu to ongoing investigations of directors like Benoît Jacquot and Jacques Doillon, both accused by multiple women including actress Judith Godrèche – are finally being pursued through the country’s courts, though both men deny the claims. The connection is hard to miss: in a nation belatedly confronting the realities of abuse behind the camera, the spectacle of the red carpet is being revised not through any meaningful confrontation with power, but through a familiar reflex – the disciplining of women’s appearances.

The choreography of composure at Cannes is rarely this loud, but it has long been precise. In 2015, a group of women were turned away from a red-carpet screening for wearing flat shoes, in violation of the long-standing, unspoken edict of heels. The premiere in question was Carol, Todd Haynes’ luminous film about lesbian desire, soft-spoken resistance, and the cost of female autonomy. The irony was unmistakable: a festival eager to honour a story about women living outside convention was, at the same time, enforcing a performance of femininity so narrow it could be undone by a pair of flats.

This year, festival officials have declared that it will once again be the “welcoming teams” who are obligated to deny red-carpet access to anyone not adhering to the updated guidelines. There are, of course, appearances organisers might prefer to avoid – Bianca Censori and Kanye West’s recent turn at the Oscars comes to mind – and yes, sweeping trains can interrupt the flow. But without clear criteria for what constitutes “decency” (a dangerous word in itself), “nudity”, or even “voluminous”, things begin to fray. Taste becomes authority; enforcement becomes subjective. In 1953, Pablo Picasso was granted an exemption from the formal dress code to wear a sheepskin jacket. Others – like the women wearing flats to the Carol premiere due to age or medical conditions – have not been so lucky.

One of the first to respond publicly was superstar stylist Karla Welch, who took to Instagram Stories to decry the rules as “boring and lame and patriarchal”. And within the starkness of her words, a latent imbalance is exposed: Cannes remains one of the few major platforms where designers often dress stars without payment, relying on visibility – and with it, garments that signal risk and originality – to make their mark. In 2024, Indian fashion influencer Nancy Tyagi made headlines for her Cannes debut in a self-stitched, 20kg ruffled gown, an act of craft, ambition, and personal vision that stood out amid a sea of couture. When goalposts shift at the last moment, it’s vital moments like this that risk being left offstage – the creativity of young designers and stylists, without the budgets or means to pivot so suddenly.

Rather than streamlining the red carpet to avoid controversy, the new rules have only exposed a rather embarrassing set of hypocrisies. Cannes has long featured onscreen nudity – from Blue Is the Warmest Colour and The Piano Teacher to the more recent Titane – often awarding and celebrating films that push into graphic, even exploitative, terrain. Yet the same festival now polices bare skin. There is also a blatant asymmetry when it comes to menswear: Manu Ríos arrived in a sheer black shirt at Cannes in 2023; Timothée Chalamet has appeared in backless halters and see-through silks – yet the ban says nothing of this.

Funnily enough, as the history of Cannes reminds us, it’s the moments of resistance, and not restraint, that really define the mythology of its red carpet. Bella Hadid’s Schiaparelli lung necklace in 2021 offered a vision of power that was anatomical, sculptural, and unforgettable. This year, she returned in Saint Laurent with a thigh-high slit and strategic cutouts that has cheekily toed the line. While Halle Berry reportedly swapped out her Gaurav Gupta dress at the last minute to comply with the rules, Heidi Klum resisted, arriving at the opening ceremony in a trailing sheer Elie Saab gown. And with another week still to go, the real suspense may lie not in the premieres, but in who chooses to push back.