On Thursday night, the annual amfAR Gala Cannes, presented by Chopard, transformed the Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc into a living gallery of beauty as provocation. The red carpet, a stage for both glamour and gimmick, offered a masterclass in the tension between concealment and revelation - a tension that has defined lingerie design since the 19th-century corset first gave way to the structural liberties of the brassiere.
Lisa Rinna, in a spiked rainbow Germanier Couture gown, crowned herself with a bleached bouffant wig by Johan Hellstrom - a direct nod to Cruella de Vil's theatrical excess. Her heavy black eye shadow and matte nude lips echoed the dramatic chiaroscuro of Victorian mourning corsetry, where fabric and flesh alike were veiled in stark contrast. Lizzo, by contrast, played with subversion through restraint: her inky black textured cut and royal blue Robert Wun gown paired with bleached brows and teal liner recalled the early 20th-century shift from whalebone to elastic - a move that liberated the silhouette while still framing the body as a canvas for ornament.
Zara Larsson's tropical eye palette and brown-taupe lips evoked the 1920s flapper's rejection of naturalism in favor of painted artifice, a rebellion mirrored in the era's rejection of the long-line corset. Maura Higgins' single dangling curl and flower-adorned bun, set against doll-like blush, whispered of Edwardian boudoir portraits, where the body was both hidden and hinted at through layers of lace and silk.
Maria Braz, with her Gothic black shadow and Old Hollywood waves, reminded us that the bra - patented in 1914 by Mary Phelps Jacob - was itself a rebellion against the rigid confines of the corset. Here, beauty becomes a form of lingerie: structural, intimate, and always a little bit dangerous.
Originally reported by WWD