Credits: Marie Claire Korea / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0.
On May 20, 2026, the red-carpet arrival for “The Battle of De Gaulle: The Iron Age” shifted attention to two looks that were immediately commented on. Bella Hadid appeared in Schiaparelli, in a dress that specialized press compared to an image of Jane Birkin. Adèle Exarchopoulos, meanwhile, wore what that same press described as a Phoebe Philo silhouette made up of a sculptural white top and black pants. Beyond a simple celebrity parade, the evening showed how Cannes turns clothing into a language. The red carpet, moreover, becomes both a stage for analysis and a theater of prestige.
A Historical Film, Then The Call Of Images
The starting point is strictly cinematic. On its official listing, the Cannes Film Festival presents “The Battle of De Gaulle: The Iron Age” as an out-of-competition film by Antonin Baudry, a French production from 2026. The official screening guide sets its May 20 showing at the Grand Théâtre Lumière. The protocol is well known. A film steps into the spotlight, and then everything around it begins to generate its own story.
This shift is anything but incidental at Cannes. The Festival rests on this dual mechanism. On one side, a selection, films, filmmakers, a very precise institutional framework. On the other, a machine for producing images whose circulation almost immediately goes beyond the evening’s primary subject. A different kind of drama unfolds between the theater and the red carpet, as well as between the official announcement and its media echo. It is shorter, more visual, but often decisive in the event’s public memory.
That is where the red carpet comes in. Cinema remains the official theme, but the flow of images quickly shifts toward the looks. Purepeople, which noted the sequence that very evening, describes a Croisette where historical film meets international glamour. The observation is accurate, but it needs to go further. Cannes does not merely show celebrities around a film. It shows how clothing can capture part of the event, condense it, and sometimes rival it.
The contrast is all the more striking because the film evokes the summer of 1940, the collapse, exile, and the birth of a political voice. Outside, another language takes over. A dress reactivates a fashion memory. An open back changes the silhouette more than it seeks effect. A pair of pants displays its zippers as a construction detail. The red carpet no longer serves only to make things visible. It offers signs to be interpreted.
Bella Hadid, The Birkin Memory Reworked By Schiaparelli
In Bella Hadid’s case, the key point is confirmed by the house itself. In a note published by Schiaparelli, the brand says the model wore a custom couture creation designed by Daniel Roseberry for the 79th Cannes Film Festival. The text describes an ivory dress in trompe-l’oeil lace embroidery, with a plunging neckline and a tiered mermaid train. Schiaparelli even specifies the number of hours of embroidery and the number of artisans involved. On this point, the attribution is solid.
What remains is the question of the exact reference. Red Carpet Fashion Awards identifies the look as a reinterpretation of a white dress associated with Jane Birkin in 1969. The hypothesis is plausible given the visual parallels, from the openwork fabric to the dark motif placed at the center of the opening. But without an explicit statement from Daniel Roseberry about this lineage, it should remain a fashion-press identification rather than an officially claimed intention.
That caution does not diminish the look’s interest. Everything here hinges on the way a memory is rearranged. Where the Birkin image suggests a supple, almost carefree freedom, Bella Hadid imposes a more constructed line. The body is not merely covered; it is framed. The lace does not float; it structures. The waist becomes more defined, the line tighter, the train extends the effect. The archive is not replayed identically. It is recalibrated for contemporary impact.
That is also what separates quotation from simple nostalgia. The point is not to reproduce a beloved past, but to extract from it a form that is immediately recognizable. Then it must be submitted to the demands of contemporary photography, digital speed, and image circulation. On that terrain, Bella Hadid has become one of the most effective interpreters of red-carpet fashion. It is less because she always surprises than because she knows how to make the logic of a house readable in an instant.
Here we find one of the dominant moves of the contemporary red carpet. It is no longer just about creating something new. It also has to recirculate signs already loaded with memory in a sharper, more immediately legible form. Heritage is not invoked for nostalgia alone. It serves as an image bank. At Schiaparelli, where legacy happily converses with controlled excess, this approach finds an ideal setting.
Adèle Exarchopoulos, The Quiet Strength Of A Built Look
Against this logic of glamorous citation, Adèle Exarchopoulos offered something else, less archival and more constructed. Red Carpet Fashion Awards attributes her look to Phoebe Philo and describes it precisely. A sculptural white top with a wide-open back. Black pants with visible zippers at the backs of the legs that create a slit effect in motion. Again, without direct confirmation from the house, the identification should remain attributed to the specialized press.
The most interesting part is elsewhere. This silhouette does not try to compete with Bella Hadid’s immediate impact. It shifts the spectacle. It comes neither from ornament nor from a famous reference. It comes from a cut and from the tension between the volume of the top and the sharpness of the pants. In other words, it results from a contrast between front and back. At Cannes, where the dress often remains the standard measure of a big night, Adèle Exarchopoulos introduces another idea of ceremony.
The word minimalism, so often used loosely, deserves some rigor here. In Phoebe Philo’s work, it does not mean erasing the garment, but intensifying it through subtraction. The unnecessary is removed so the cut becomes the subject. Things are lightened so structural detail can stand out. Adèle Exarchopoulos’s open back is not just a moment of occasion-driven seduction. It reconfigures the silhouette. The visible zippers do more than decorate. They organize how the garment is read.
This way of occupying space is valuable on a red carpet saturated with effects. It forces a different kind of looking. No longer just admiring or comparing, but observing the outfit as a construction. Some appearances work immediately through the force of their image. This one, by contrast, gains intensity gradually. It does so as the relationships among volume, surface, and tension are parsed in detail.
That is what makes Adèle Exarchopoulos’s presence so interesting on this red-carpet climb. She is not playing the tasteful counterpoint to a more attention-grabbing dress. She offers a different kind of visibility, slower, more attentive to volume, openings, and balance. In other words, a garment designed less for immediate exclamation than for gradual reading.
At Cannes, The Red Carpet Has Become A Space For Reading
Between the glamorous citation attributed to Bella Hadid and the conceptual austerity associated with Adèle Exarchopoulos, Cannes reveals a broader evolution. The red carpet is no longer just a theater of presence. It has become a space for reading. Each major appearance is placed within a history of maisons, references, and aesthetic loyalties.
This transformation does not erase spectacle. It refines it. People are no longer looking only at who is there. They are looking at what is being said. Schiaparelli here activates the power of a narrative couture capable of bringing an older visual world back into the present. Phoebe Philo’s universe, as relayed by fashion press in the case of Adèle Exarchopoulos, instead shifts attention toward construction, toward a garment that does not need to overstate itself to impose its logic.
What remains is the very Cannes-like paradox of the evening. A film about De Gaulle, war, and political resolve provided the framework for a remarkably intense fashion conversation. That is not an incidental detour. It is a Cannes truth. At Cannes, cinema does not fade behind fashion. It lends fashion its stage. And fashion, when treated as more than social gossip, illuminates the way we now make icons. It does so with roles and stories, of course, but also with lines, materials, and references.
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