Credits: Marie Claire Korea / Wikimedia Commons — CC BY 3.0.
On May 20, 2026, the red carpet for “La Bataille de Gaulle: L’Âge de fer” shifted attention to two immediately discussed silhouettes. Bella Hadid appeared in Schiaparelli, in a dress the specialized press likens to an image of Jane Birkin. Adèle Exarchopoulos, meanwhile, wore what the same press described as a Phoebe Philo look made of a sculptural white top and black trousers. The evening demonstrated, beyond a simple parade of celebrities, how Cannes transforms clothing into language. Moreover, the red carpet becomes both a site of analysis and a theater of prestige.
A Historical Film, Then The Call Of Images
The starting point is strictly cinematic. On its official page, the Festival de Cannes presents “La Bataille de Gaulle: L’Âge de fer” as an out-of-competition film by Antonin Baudry, a 2026 French production. The official screening guide schedules its May 20 session at the Grand Théâtre Lumière. The protocol is known. A film enters the light, and then everything around it begins to produce its own story.
This shift is not incidental at Cannes. The Festival rests on this double mechanism. On one hand, a selection, films, auteurs, a very specific institutional framework. On the other, a factory of images whose circulation almost immediately exceeds the evening’s primary object. Another dramaturgy plays out between the auditorium and the steps, as well as between the official announcement and its media reprise. It is shorter, more visual, but often decisive in the public memory of the event.
This is where the red carpet comes in. Cinema remains the official motif, but the circulation of images quickly moves toward silhouettes. Purepeople, which noted the sequence the same evening, describes a Croisette where the historical film crosses international glamour. The observation is correct, but one must go further. Cannes does not only show celebrities around a film. It shows how clothing can capture part of the event, condense it and sometimes compete with it.
The gap is all the more striking because the film evokes the summer of 1940, the débâcle, exile, the birth of a political voice. Outside, another language asserts itself. A dress reactivates a fashion memory. A bare back alters bearing more than it seeks an effect. Trousers show their zippers as a construction detail. The red carpet no longer only serves to be seen. It offers signs to interpret.
Bella Hadid, The Birkin Memory Revisited By Schiaparelli
In Bella Hadid’s case, the essentials are confirmed by the house itself. In a note published by Schiaparelli, the brand states that the model wore a bespoke couture creation designed by Daniel Roseberry for the 79th Festival de Cannes. The text describes an ivory dress in trompe-l’œil 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.
The question of the exact reference remains. Red Carpet Fashion Awards identifies the look as a reinterpretation of a white dress associated with Jane Birkin in 1969. The hypothesis is credible given the visual correspondences, from the openwork material to the dark motif placed at the center of the neckline. But in the absence of an explicit statement from Daniel Roseberry about this lineage, one must stick to a fashion-press identification rather than an officially claimed intention.
This caution does not diminish the interest of the silhouette. Everything here plays out in the manner of rearranging a memory. Where the Birkin image evokes a relaxed, almost nonchalant freedom, Bella Hadid imposes a more constructed line. The body is not only wrapped; it is framed. The lace does not float, it structures. The waist is defined, the line tightens, the train extends the effect. The archive is not replayed identically. It is recalibrated for contemporary impact.
This is also what distinguishes citation from mere nostalgia. It is not about reproducing a beloved past, but extracting an immediately recognizable form from it. Then it must be subjected to current demands of photography, digital rhythm and image circulation. On that ground, Bella Hadid has become one of the most effective interpreters of red carpet fashion. Less because she always surprises than because she knows how to make a house’s logic legible in an instant.
Here we find one of the dominant gestures of the contemporary red carpet. It is no longer only about producing the new. It is also about putting back into circulation signs already loaded with memory in a clearer and more immediately readable form. Heritage is not invoked for nostalgia alone. It serves as an image reserve. At Schiaparelli, where heritage willingly converses with controlled excess, this process finds an ideal terrain.
Adèle Exarchopoulos, The Quiet Strength Of A Constructed Silhouette
Against this logic of glamorous citation, Adèle Exarchopoulos offered something else, less patrimonial and more constructed. Red Carpet Fashion Awards attributes her look to Phoebe Philo and describes it precisely. A sculptural white top with a widely open back. Black trousers whose visible zips at the back of the legs produce an effect of a slit in motion. Again, absent a direct confirmation noted from the house, the identification must remain attributed to the specialized press.
The most interesting part lies elsewhere. This silhouette does not try to compete with Bella Hadid’s immediate obviousness. It shifts the spectacular. It does not come from ornament or a famous reference. Rather, it comes from cut and from a tension between the volume of the top and the dryness of the trousers. Thus it results from a contrast between face and reverse. At Cannes, where the dress often remains the unit of measure for the big night, Adèle Exarchopoulos introduces another idea of ceremonial.
The word minimalism, often used lightly, deserves rigor here. For Phoebe Philo, it does not signify the erasure of clothing, but an intensification by subtraction. You remove the superfluous so that the cut becomes the subject. You lighten so that the structural detail gains relief. Adèle Exarchopoulos’s bare back is not mere circumstantial seduction. It recomposes the silhouette. The visible zips do not merely decorate. They organize how the garment is read.
This way of occupying space is precious on a red carpet saturated with effects. It forces you to look differently. No longer only to admire or compare, but to observe the outfit as a construction. Some appearances live immediately by the obviousness of their image. In contrast, this one gains intensity progressively. Indeed, that happens as one details the relations of volumes, surfaces and tensions.
That is what makes Adèle Exarchopoulos’s presence so interesting on this ascent of the steps. She does not play a tame counterpoint to a flashier dress. She proposes another visibility, slower, more attentive to volumes, openings, balances. In other words, a garment less designed for immediate exclamation than for progressive reading.
At Cannes, The Red Carpet Has Become A Reading Space
Between the glamorous citation attributed to Bella Hadid and the conceptual austerity associated with Adèle Exarchopoulos, Cannes hints at a broader evolution. The red carpet is no longer just a theater of presence. It has become a reading space. Each important appearance is placed within a history of houses, references and aesthetic loyalties.
This transformation does not eliminate the spectacular. It refines it. You no longer only look at who is there. You seek what is being said. Schiaparelli activates here the power of a narrative couture capable of reintroducing an old imaginary into the present. Phoebe Philo’s universe, as relayed by the fashion press in Adèle Exarchopoulos’s case, shifts attention toward construction, toward a garment that does not need to add for its logic to assert itself.
There remains the very Cannes paradox of this evening. A film about de Gaulle, about war and political tenacity provided the protocol for a sartorial conversation of rare intensity. It is not an anecdotal diversion. It is a truth of the Festival. At Cannes, cinema does not fade behind fashion. It lends it its stage. And fashion, when treated as more than gossip, illuminates our contemporary way of making icons. Indeed, this is done with roles and narratives, of course, but also with lines, materials and references.
