If there’s a rebel in Cannes, it’s Kristen Stewart.
The 36-year-old Chanel ambassador has spent a decade ignoring the film festival’s strict dress code. Her two latest looks from the 2026 Cannes Film Festival are no exception.
At Saturday’s photocall for her new comedy Full Fill, Stewart wore Chanel’s Spring 2026 Couture set. She layered a sheer gray tweed polo shirt over a skin-tone tank top, paired it with shorts and a knee-length skirt. She completed her look with a vintage Nike Swoosh Saddle Oxford and a Chanel Rene ring.
Tara Swennen, the actress’ longtime stylist, told Vogue that the lightweight foundation made the set “more revealing than it actually was.”
She may have gotten away with wearing sneakers at the photocall, but casual shoes are specifically prohibited at the Grand Théâtre Lumière’s gala screening.
That didn’t stop Stewart. For that night’s premiere, she changed into a red and black knitted Chanel dress from Chanel’s Fall 2026 collection, with a loose knit that revealed a black bra and high-waisted briefs underneath.
She paired it with a Chanel Premiere Ribbon red watch ($6,050) and Comet Harmony ring, as well as black ruby brown 3306 Dames high-top sneakers, which she flashed while walking the red carpet.
Both kicks came straight from Stewart’s own closet, Swennen told Vogue.
Stewart’s avoidance of the dress code has become a Cannes tradition. In 2016, she ditched her Christian Louboutin heels at the premiere of Personal Shopper and replaced them with beat-up Vans after she finished her step-and-repeat. She kicked off the festival with a series of red carpet T-shirts and returned the following year with a bleached buzz cut.
Her most vocal protest came in 2018, when she took off her Christian Louboutin heels on the steps of the Palais. At the time, the festival’s unspoken dress code required women to wear high heels.
“Things have to change quickly,” Stewart told IndieWire. “If[a guy and I]were walking on a red carpet together and someone stopped me and said, ‘Excuse me, girl, I’m not wearing heels. You can’t come in,'[I’m]going to say, ‘He’s not even my friend. Does he need to wear heels?'”
Since then, Cannes has eased rules on footwear but tightened others, banning nude dresses, voluminous trains and sneakers at gala screenings.
Still, Stewart’s momentum didn’t slow down. Last year, at the premiere of her directorial debut, The Chronology of Water, she bypassed the dress code by layering a sheer skirt over shorts and appeared in a Chanel tweed jumpsuit with almost all the buttons undone, a baseball cap, shorts suit and tie.
Swennen, who has been dressing Stewart since she was 14, told Vogue that she thinks the guidelines are open to interpretation.
“I think (the rules) will be malleable as long as it’s not vulgar and people remain sophisticated,” Swennen said. “People should feel free to go and have fun, promote their art and be true to themselves.”
