Remember when Kristen Stewart caused a scandal by wearing Chuck Taylors on the red carpet? LOL. Welcome to 2018, where everything and nothing has changed. Red carpet events still have a very gender-specific dress code, and none more so than Cannes. (Remember how, in 2015, the film festival blocked women from screenings — including of Todd Hayes’s lesbian romance Carol, ironically — for not wearing heels?) At the Cannes screening of Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman yesterday, seemingly in a silent protest of outdated dress codes, Stewart straight-up kicked off her Louboutin heels and climbed the stairs barefoot, as photographers caught the whole thing on camera.
“There’s definitely a distinct dress code, right?” Kristen told The Hollywood Reporter at last year’s festival, while promoting her directorial debut Come Swim. “People get very upset at you if you don’t wear heels or something. But I feel like you can’t ask people that any more. It’s just kind of a given. If you’re not asking guys to wear heels and a dress, you cannot ask me either.”
At the first Cannes circuit since the downfall of Harvey Weinstein and the birth of #MeToo, red carpet protests aren’t just about shoes and dresses. Earlier in the week, 82 women — including Kristen, Cate Blanchett, Ava DuVernay, and Salma Hayek — staged a red carpet march calling for equal pay and equal representation.
82 is a significant number because it’s the number of female directors who’ve been chosen to compete at Cannes since the festival started in 1946 — compared with 1,600 male directors, none of whom have been ballsy enough to rock up barefoot.