The Merching of Venice

How Luxury Brands Have Upped the Glam Quotient at Film Festivals.

In This Edition: Giorgio Armani, Sophia Loren, Jane Campion, Damien Chazelle, and more.

Time was that a film festival was about cinema: you went to the movies, talked about movies, saw movie stars and directors.

But for the last decade or so, luxury fashion has gotten in on the action, solidifying the link between couture and cinema. The relationship apexed this week when François-Henri Pinault, the French billionaire and chief executive of Kering, the luxury group that owns Gucci, Saint Laurent, Balenciaga, and Alexander McQueen, said that his family office Artémis bought a majority stake in Creative Artists Agency, one of Hollywood’s largest talent agencies. Pinault’s wife, the actress Salma Hayek, is repped by CAA.

Yes, brands have been dressing stars for the red carpet for some time—a history I lay out in my first book, Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Luster. And in the early 2000s, that relationship became more official with very specific contracts—a practice known as Red Carpet Revenue. As I wrote in Deluxe:

Celebrity agents at William Morris, CAA, ICM, and others negotiate the contracts, and the luxury brands state their requirements. A brooch must be visible in an above-the-waist shot. Earrings have to be visible, so hair has to be up. The celebrity must say the brand’s name two to four times on a national television channel. When asked to talk about his or her look, the celebrity must refer to the brand in an audible and clear manner.

“It’s part of the star’s branding,” says Armani’s Wanda McDaniel.

So successful has this partnership been that the luxury brands started mounting their own fashion sidebar at film festivals. First, there were new store opening parties. Then splashy dinners. Then full-blown fashion events. Now, as I saw at Venice over the last two weeks, fashion brands are so implicated in the major fests, without them, there would be nearly no glam quotient.