Cannes Film Festival 2012: Pictures that are worth millions

Eva Herzigova in Chopard jewellery and Dolce & Gabbana gown

The right dress + the right star + the Cannes red carpet = red-hot fashion sales. Luke Leitch checks the Croisette accounts.

You can tell just how important - and commercial - the Cannes red carpet has become by how rigorously it is organised. Like lollipop men, but dressed in tuxedos, there is a team whose sole job is to steer starlets through what has become the world's biggest fashion photo-opportunity - one that is almost as vital to oiling the wheels of Cannes as the films are.

This year, their work began at the opening ceremony of the 65th Film Festival on Wednesday. At 6.40pm, the celebrity traffic was light: they waved the Virginie Ledoyen straight through. Wearing an excellent, elegant Elie Saab dark green strapless gown, Ledoyen took five minutes to walk 20 yards, stopping every few feet to swivel, steady herself, tilt her head then pose for the bellowing, four-deep photographer-phalanxes.

Suddenly, a traffic jam: Jane Fonda, Lana Del Rey, Eva Herzigova, Freida Pinto, Jessica Chastain, Eva Longoria, Fan Bing Bing and many more all either sat on the sweltering Croisette in their cars (where, according to one red-carpet stylist, they would have had tissue wadded in their armpits to prevent staining their dress) or waiting in a holding area at the bottom of the carpet.

At 90-second intervals, the lollipop men gestured them forward for their slow, lurking progress up the carpet. Pinto (in split, peplummed Michael Angel dress) and Fonda (in a shimmering, mirrored Atelier Versace gown), were particularly excellent posers; Fonda jiggled, wiggled, grabbed Alec Baldwin in a bearhug and seemed delighted to be there, while Pinto's beaming grin seemed spontaneous, too. The excitable Frenchman commentating for the thousands of rubberneckers played a Del Rey song as the singer started her walk: within minutes, Italian designer Alberta Ferretti pressed "Send" on an email to thousands, announcing itself as the designer of the singer's dress.

Even off the record, no fashion house will admit to paying actresses or models to wear their their clothes on the Cannes red carpet. They will, however, gleefully whisper suggestions that all their rivals do. The truth is somewhere in between: some actresses take money to wear dresses, others have more hazy ties that dictate their choice. One French fashion VIP wrangler said yesterday: "We never pay people to wear our designs. Many do, though, and you can't blame the actresses. Ten thousand euros or more just to wear a dress for the night? I'd do it, wouldn't you?"

One of the most significant sprinklers of stardust in Cannes is not a designer but a jeweller. Knockout pieces by Chopard - which has been a part of the festival for 15 years - glittered on Del Rey, Berenice Bejo, Ledoyen, Fonda, Pinto, Bing Bing and Dolores Chaplin. Herzigova, an old friend of Chopard's co-president, Caroline Scheufele, wore a particularly amazing, lace-intricate, white-gold and diamond necklace designed by Scheufele for the company's exhibition of 25 unseen Marilyn Monroe photographs that opened here this week.

Speaking at Chopard's penthouse pavilion in the Martinez hotel, Scheufele said: "Apart from being exposed the next second all over the world because you have 5,000 journalists, and I don't know how many TV stations, I would say that when you put the the most beautiful necklace in the most beautiful location - say, Place Vendôme - it's nice. But the minute you put it on a celebrity, a beautiful woman and she moves around with it, it becomes alive: this is the difference." She has known customers to arrive at Chopard boutiques with cut-out Cannes red-carpet pictures of Sharon Stone in a pair of earrings, who order them immediately. "It is very useful," she said. "A nice side- effect. But remember it is not just about wearing a dress from Dolce Gabbana or Versace, it is about looking their best, too. For the actresses, the red carpet is a one-off moment and they want to get it right."

The phenomenon of fashion house-led red-carpet style began in 1995, when Barbara Tfank (Michelle Obama's favourite designer, btfank.com ) dressed Uma Thurman in a Tfank-refashioned Prada dress for the Oscars. From LA, Tfank said: "Modern films (excluding period films and TV) have become so 'real', perhaps people long for some aspirational fantasy? The red carpet harkens back to the glamour that Hollywood once embraced via its iconic stars and talented costume designers: think of Carole Lombard, Audrey Hepburn, Grace Kelly. Now, the carpet has become the only outlet for stars where full-on glamour is expected and accepted." 

So perhaps the film industry has missed a trick by sacrificing its on-screen glamour - and the fashion houses have just filled the gap. As costume designer Edith Head wrote in the 1970s: "We don't make glamorous movies today. Everything now is very realistic, artistic - and depressing. When is the last time you you saw a wonderful musical or a fabulous fantasy?" The answer is on Wednesday night, when those tuxedoed lollipop men choreographed the Cannes red carpet.

The insider speaks: Eva Herzigova on how she handles the flashbulbs of the Croisette

"In an editorial shoot there is only one picture being taken, and you can control the angle. But on the red carpet, you can't control anything: there are 360 degrees of photographers. So all you can do is walk, walk through, and when they call your name look over and say "Hallo!", smile, and move on. 

A wrong dress, or high heels - they can make it difficult. But it's about how you feel really. You can be in a sh---- dress and still feel great: you just don't care and it's fine. It's really about confidence. Do some meditation just before you get out there: this is it, you can't change what you look like, you've done that hair, that make-up - so just go with it.

If you think that you have the worldwide press there, who will instantly send the image around the world, that will make it nerve-wracking. You have to think: 'I'm just going to see a movie.'

Normally I turn up, pick a dress at the last minute, and go to Caroline (of Chopard) and we would pick jewellery that would go with the dress. This is the first year that the necklace was the focal point - it's the Marilyn necklace, made especially. So it was quite a challenge: the look started off from the choice of jewellery."