The 19 Best Thigh-High Slit Dresses in Cannes Red Carpet History

There’s a science to a thigh-high slit. In 2016, Bella Hadid, otherwise known as the queen of Cannes, attended a screening of The Unknown in a dress that defied gravity—and wind. The then-19-year-old wore a liquid silk gown of deep crimson designed by Alexandre Vauthier that barely clung to her frame. The slit was most impressive. Not your average thigh-high, this one went so far as to graze her hipbone. And yet somehow everything stayed in place. In her draped silk with its strategic cutaways, she looked like a sculpture of a goddess—the kind that might not scandalize the Romans, but surely did the Cannes gatekeepers.

Though Hadid’s slit may have been the most dramatic, it is by no means the only daring reveal to grace the Cannes red carpet. Despite—or perhaps in reaction to—its history of strict dress codes, the French film festival seems to encourage a bit of fashion rebellion among its attendees. The hipbone-grazing slash in fabric is just one expression of this desire to push back against the sartorial constructs—but it is, also, perhaps one of the most exciting.

In 2009, Angelina Jolie, famous for her daring slits, took to the carpet for the premiere of Inglourious Basterds in swaths of nude silk. The Versace dress’s skirt framed one thigh with a slit cut up nearly to her hipbone. In 2014, Blake Lively wore a Gucci Première sheath with bolts of wine-colored chiffon parting at the top of each thigh. Then in 2024, Demi Moore wore a satin strapless column dress from Celine with its own slit up its right side. And the list of stylish leg-baring gowns goes on and on.

Ahead, we’ve rounded up our favorite gowns featuring thigh-high slits of the Cannes red carpet.