Princess Diana’s Iconic Icy Blue Dress Lives on at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival
The famous blue dress that Princess Diana wore to the 1987 Cannes Festival was referenced by actor Anastasia Andrushkevich on the 2026 red carpet—but the look’s fashion history goes beyond both Di and Ana.
Reported by Vogue.
Cannes 2026 is running on archive fever. According to Vogue, the Croisette has already delivered Bella Hadid in a 2003 Louis Vuitton moment, Simone Ashley in crimson McQueen previously claimed by both Cate Blanchett and Gisele Bündchen, and Ruth Negga in caped Ossie Clark. But the most layered tribute on the red carpet belongs to Anastasia Andrushkevich — a 24-year-old French-Russian actor and concert pianist from Rostov-on-Don — who arrived at the premiere of Fjord in a custom dusty sky-blue gown by Mehmet Ozden that was unmistakably channeling Princess Diana.
Three Women, One Dress, Decades of Meaning
The reference trail here is rich. Diana's original pale blue gown — designed by Catherine Walker, still a favorite of Princess Catherine's — debuted at the 1987 Cannes Film Festival as a deliberate nod to the ice-blue costume Edith Head created for Grace Kelly in Hitchcock's To Catch a Thief (1955), a film itself shot on the French Riviera. Hitchcock was explicit about the color's intent: "I deliberately photographed Grace Kelly ice-cold," he told François Truffaut in 1962, describing a beauty that was classical, distant, and precise. Diana's version translated that chill into something more intimate — a strapless, monochromatic chiffon silhouette with a light scarf cascading down the back as a sweeping train, finished with matching fabric evening bag, flat satin pumps worn deliberately to avoid height over Prince Charles, and sapphire-and-diamond chandelier earrings. The gown sold at auction in 2003 for $108,000. Diana wore it a second time in 1989 at the Miss Saigon premiere — a bold and unusual repeat for a royal, which only underscored how personally she held this particular piece.
Andrushkevich's interpretation tracked the original closely: the same dusty blue, a strapless bodice with horizontal draping wrapped around the torso, a fluid skirt that moved as she walked, and a thin matching neck scarf. The primary departure was structural — Diana's bodice featured a geometric, criss-crossing cut that dropped below the hips, while Andrushkevich's was more streamlined. Her beauty look echoed Diana's too: a bouncy blonde lob parted to the side, paired with delicate serpentine silver earrings and a fine bracelet.
The Diana-Grace connection was never purely aesthetic. When they met in 1981 — months after Diana's engagement to Charles — a then-19-year-old Diana reportedly broke down in front of a 51-year-old Grace, confiding her fear about losing her privacy and her impending marriage. Grace offered comfort. After Grace's death in 1982, Diana attended her funeral in Monaco, later telling her biographer Andrew Morton: "She was wonderful and serene. There was troubled water under her. I saw that." A woman who understood that kind of pressure wore a dress referencing another woman who did too. That's not styling — that's language.
Fashion's deepest tributes don't just recreate a look; they carry its full weight — and this one traveled from a Hitchcock soundstage to the French Riviera to a London theatre and, finally, back to Cannes where it all began.
Read the original at Vogue.
