The 2026 Cannes Film Festival Red Carpet Was Full of Sartorial Homages
A Princess Diana tribute, Jane Birkin nod, and more
Reported by Harper's Bazaar.
The 2026 Cannes Film Festival red carpet wasn't just a showcase of who wore what — it was a full-blown dialogue between past and present, with stars arriving in looks that explicitly (and sometimes accidentally) echoed fashion history. According to Harper's Bazaar, the carpet was dense with sartorial homages, from royal references to self-quotation to borrowed menswear.
The most precise tribute came from French-Russian actor Anastasia Andrushkevich, who wore a light-blue silk chiffon Mehmet Ozden gown that mirrored Princess Diana's 1987 Cannes appearance almost stitch for stitch — same strapless silhouette, same scarf detail, same quiet devastation. Meanwhile, Bella Hadid arrived in a custom Schiaparelli couture gown designed by Daniel Roseberry as a reimagining of Jane Birkin's iconic 1969 crochet dress. The piece — a plunging, mermaid-trained construction with trompe l'œil lace embroidery and a black brooch — required 130 artisans and a staggering 22,160 hours of embroidery work. Effortless it was not, but neither was it supposed to be.
When the Reference Is You
Demi Moore proved the boldest move is citing your own archive. Her ethereal custom Gucci mermaid gown was, per stylist Brad Goreski, directly inspired by a micro dress she wore to the 2003 premiere of The Matrix Reloaded — a Tom Ford–era Gucci piece that apparently never left her mind. Simone Ashley offered what may have been a less deliberate echo: her striking red Alexander McQueen gown — strapless, drop-waisted, with a trailing skirt — bore an uncanny resemblance to the look Gisele Bündchen made legendary at the 2011 Met Gala. Intentional or not, the effect was electric.
The evening's most unexpected moment belonged to Renate Reinsve, who showed up not in couture but in an Ami Paris suit — custom-made for her Sentimental Value co-star Stellan Skarsgård for the film's Fjord premiere. She simply borrowed it. In a sea of elaborate homages and painstaking reconstructions, wearing your co-star's suit was somehow the most original statement on the carpet.
Fashion's most compelling trick is its long memory — and at Cannes 2026, the women who played with that memory most deliberately were the ones who owned the room.
Read the original at Harper's Bazaar.
