Despite its older birthday, Venice Film Festival has always played second fiddle to its rebellious little sister, Cannes. The latter glamour vortex over 11 days in May was born in 1939 in response to the political fallout happening over at the Italian movie celebration (a veto from Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler prevented the French war drama, La Grande Illusion, from winning at Venice as the ’30s came to a close), and was initially slated to take place in Biarritz. But when the owners of the glittering Riviera hotels lining Cannes’s famous Croisette mobilised, they won the gig and Hollywood’s ears pricked up.
Except the inaugural French festival inviting all film-producing countries and their stars never happened, because Germany invaded Poland. By the time Cannes got up and running in 1946, the world was chomping at the bit for motion-picture magic. Its kick-off event featured doves released dramatically into the sky, fireworks, torchlit parades, flower competitions, fashion shows, and the election of the first Miss Festival as the pocket-sized seaside town staked its claim on the entertainment landscape. As the ’50s rolled around, silver-screen doyennes, such as Sophia Loren, Grace Kelly, and Brigitte Bardot, had booked their plane tickets. Venice—which started life on the terrace of the Hotel Excelsior on the Lido in 1932 and makes no mention of Cannes in its own potted history, quietly watched on from the sidelines.
While Cannes has become a springboard for jewelry sponsorships and brand partnerships (Chopard inexplicably presented Elizabeth Hurley’s eponymous swimwear line at Nikki Beach in 2006), Venice has never shouted about its capacity for glitz. Cannes welcomes supermodels, nudists (OK, maybe not welcomes), popstars, pornstars, reality TV stars, and anyone with a propensity for wearing fist-sized diamonds (Lady Victoria Hervey is still a regular), but Venice lets la dolce vita speak for itself. Cannes’s come-one, come-all mentality facilitates a kind of fabulous friction against the famously strict dress code, which was once in line with the resort town’s fancy casinos, but is now deemed outdated. Venice doesn’t have such an issue with high heels.
There’s no denying the Cannes circus is entertaining. Take the headline-making moment Madonna first treated the red carpet to Jean Paul Gaultier’s cone bra in 1991, or the time Milla Jovovich was reportedly sewn back into her beaded loincloth while on The Fifth Element 1997 red carpet. Every instance a woman (see: Julia Roberts, Kristen Stewart, and Jennifer Lawrence) goes barefoot or *gasp!* wears flip-flops, the press goes completely mad, despite the fact we’ve seen it before.
Not so for Venice, which quietly water taxis its guests into town with little fuss and only the faintest whiff of nautical attire to add to the windswept mood. By the time the Italian installment comes around at the end of the summer, there seems to be a visible sigh of relief and a relaxing of the shoulders. There are freckles dotted on actors’ skin (although not if you’re Anne Hathaway!), tales of holidays to tell, and more space for the Hollywoodites to, quite literally, take up. There is no threat of a Kardashian-Jenner derailing the hot-ticket premiere of the week, because LA proper is either still circling the Med (looking at you, Leonardo DiCaprio) or IV-ed up to vitamin drips in Calabasas while resetting their rosé-dinted chakras and talking about their big business plans for September.
Timothée Chalamet, for example, has been known to spritz his way through an afternoon in Venice wearing leather pants, before changing into a red halter-neck Haider Ackermann look on the Bones and All red carpet. That same festival in 2022, Florence Pugh, sorry Miss Flo, also enjoyed an afternoon of Aperol while her Don’t Worry Darling co-stars fumbled their way through an awkward press conference about her absence and the dismissal of Shia LaBeouf from the film set. Pugh’s fashion retort via resplendent custom Valentino couture was one for the books.
Cannes delivers bombshell mic drops (no one will ever recover from that Monica Bellucci look in ’97), but Venice leaves the door open for fashion moments of a different kind. The 2018 edition saw Lady Gaga emerge not out of a Latex Chalayan egg, but some kind of feathered fashion chrysalis to become a bona fide movie star. When drizzle threatened to dampen her puff of baby pink Valentino plumes at the A Star is Born premiere, she did what any professional performer would do and turned it into a whole thing. That a bolt of lightning later struck the theatre and caused a power outage only added to the sense of immense drama. It was perfect—as the eight-minute standing ovation at the end of the showcase proved.
At Venice, there’s less jostling to wear the Schiaparelli gold lungs necklace of the season (see: Bella Hadid at Cannes in 2021) or compete with the bevy of supers in town for events, such as Naomi Campbell’s Fashion For Relief show. Younger talents, like Taylor Russell, Emma Corrin, and Zendaya, keep the sparkle quotient high, but there’s just as much onus on the Lido looks that paint a picture of the actors’ personal style (check out: Corrin in Miu Miu knickers last year and Harry Styles in his signature high-waisted Gucci tailoring the year prior) as the industry braces itself for a new season.
Just because autumn is on the approach, don’t for a second think the Venice line-up is boring. Aside from its dicey political history, my colleague Radhika Seth says, “It’s almost as if something’s been in the water at Venice over the past decade, making the festival a magnet for industry drama”, such as the memorable Lars von Trier debacle and that Chris Pine spitting incident. This year welcomes a blockbuster cast to the lagoon, such as thoughtful dressers Cate Blanchett and Angelina Jolie, who will have eco-conscious fashion at the forefront of their minds; the darkly eccentric Beetlejuice Beetlejuice cohort, including Winona Ryder, Catherine O’Hara, and Jenna Ortega; and Lady Gaga. Can lightning strike twice? Don’t expect Venice to sing about it if it does rain.
This story was originally published on Vogue.com.
