Perhaps not since Cinderella lost a glass slipper at the ball has there been such a stir about glamorous footwear as there was on Tuesday in Cannes over a report that women had been turned away from a film premiere for failing to wear heels.
Social media and the festival gossip circuit lit up after the Screen Daily trade publication reported that a handful of women had been refused entry to Sunday’s premiere of Todd Haynes’s lesbian romance ‘Carol’ for wearing flats.
As the story sparked hundreds of angry tweets, festival director Thierry Fremaux quickly took to Twitter to set the record straight.
“The rumour that the festival requires high heels for the women on the steps is baseless,” he wrote, referring to the entrance of the main Cannes venue.
“For the steps, the rules haven’t changed. ‘No smoking, evening wear.’ There is no mention of heels,” he tweeted. However the report prompted celebrities at the festival to take a stand.
Asif Kapadia, the director of the Amy Winehouse documentary ‘Amy’, said on Twitter that his wife had run afoul of an alleged shoe diktat but that she was “eventually let in” to a premiere.
Actress Emily Blunt, asked about the Screen Daily report, called it “very disappointing, obviously”.
“I think everyone should wear flats to be honest, at the best of times, we shouldn’t wear high heels anyway, that’s just my point of view. I just prefer wearing combat sneakers,” Blunt said at a news conference to launch her competition film ‘Sicario’.
The film’s Canadian director, Denis Villeneuve joked that he and his male stars, Benicio del Toro and Josh Brolin, would wear heels to the evening premiere of ‘Sicario’ in protest.
The Hollywood Reporter later said that “numerous women” had been turned away by the Cannes fashion police due to their foot attire, including one wearing “ankle boots and tights” and another who had slipped into “platform sandals”.
Others, however, got away scot-free, including one woman with “patent-leather loafers and red heart socks”.
A male AFP video reporter at Cannes, meanwhile, was reprimanded during the festival for wearing grey leather shoes with his black tuxedo. He however got off with a warning.
The big premieres at Cannes are governed by a strict dress code printed on tickets requiring formal wear for all guests. It does not specifically mention footwear.
Ahead of the festival, Fremaux also discouraged attendees from taking “selfies” on the red carpet, calling such mobile-phone photos “grotesque”.
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