The heels-only policy for women is still in effect at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival, where Variety’s co-EIC Claudia Eller was briefly stopped Saturday by security officials for not wearing high heels, she claimed in a video posted on Twitter.
“Last night I was stopped on the Cannes red carpet and told by this idiotic security guard that I couldn’t get into this premiere because I was wearing flats,” Eller tweeted, sharing a video of the encounter. “I threatened to post this video on our Variety website. I got in.”
Later that evening, Eller participated in a panel on inclusion, in which she shared the experience of the incident along with another she witnessed, according to writer Eugene Hernandez’s Twitter post. “At #WomenInMotion talk abt inclusion, diversity & gender parity, @Variety_Claudia relating 2 sickening #Cannes2019 incidents last nite. Woman in East Indian attire asked to remove pants to make her blouse a dress, Claudia herself in black tie stopped for flatness of shoes! Gross,” Hernandez explained on Twitter.
Chiming in on Twitter, another journalist compared Eller to Kristen Stewart, who has openly objected to the French festival’s strict rules on women wearing only heels throughout the ceremony.
In fact, Stewart removed her Christian Louboutin heels last year as she posed for photos on the red carpet at the “BlacKkKlansman” movie premiere. With a shoe in each hand, she ascended the staircase in iconoclast style —without a care about the longtime no-flats-allowed dress code at the Palais des Festivals.
The uproar with the Cannes heels-only rules began in 2015, best known as “#heelgate,” when 50 women who wore flats were denied access to the screening of “Carol” — leading to outrage among A-list female stars.
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See celebrity arrivals on the Cannes Film Festival 2019 red carpet.
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