WWD published its mid-festival best-dressed read from the 79th Cannes Film Festival this week, and the answer was not the rising starlets the festival is usually built to launch. WWD's style team singled out Demi Moore, Jane Fonda, and Joan Collins — ages 63, 88, and 92 — as the three actresses defining the red carpet on the Croisette. None of them are at the festival to debut a perfume.
What each of them wore
Moore is on the main competition jury this year, which gives her a red-carpet appearance for every gala screening. She opened with a strapless silver sequined custom Jacquemus, completed by a five-tier diamond necklace and floral earrings from Chopard. Her subsequent looks have rotated through Nina Ricci and Gucci, with center-parted, shoulder-skimming hair every time — a near-singular silhouette that is becoming its own brand language.
Fonda made her first public appearance since the death of her ex-husband Ted Turner. She wore a long-sleeved sequined Gucci gown with Pomellato High jewellery, and she gave one of the more quietly composed interviews of the festival. Collins, at 92, walked in custom Valentino and Chopard, kept the wave in her hair, and reminded the international fashion press that she has been doing this on this carpet since 1955.
This is a strategic moment for fashion
The pivot to women over 60 as red-carpet leads isn't an accident. The luxury brands dressing them — Jacquemus, Gucci, Valentino, Nina Ricci — are all in active rebrand or repositioning cycles. Sabato De Sarno's Gucci has been pulled hard toward old Hollywood references; Jacquemus is moving from beachwear-coded silhouettes toward gala dressing; Valentino under Alessandro Michele is reaching for legacy clientele. Each brand benefits from a face that telegraphs continuity rather than viral youth. Veteran actresses at Cannes are the fastest way to buy that signal.
The math also lines up: the consumer with disposable income for a $5,000 Jacquemus is more likely to recognize Demi Moore from Indecent Proposal than a TikTok-native cast member of the latest A24 release. The trio is selling the brands directly to the people most likely to actually buy.
What the festival is doing on purpose
Cannes' 79th edition has leaned hard into nostalgia all month — three honorary Palmes d'Or (Peter Jackson, John Travolta, and Barbra Streisand), an opening reissue of Pan's Labyrinth, and a jury anchored by Moore. We covered the Travolta moment last week as a sign the festival is openly reaching for star wattage at a time when streaming is winning the prestige war. The fashion side of the festival is making the same move in different clothes. The women being celebrated are not new arrivals. They are evidence that taste, presence, and a long career are still currency.
That is not nothing in 2026, when most of the fashion conversation is dominated by 22-year-olds on Instagram. Cannes built itself, once again, as the place where elegance is allowed to be a craft rather than a content category. Moore, Fonda, and Collins are showing what that looks like when it has been practiced for decades.
Comments