The Madame Figaro outdoor photo exhibition “Mode & Cinéma” invites ordinary people to step into a world of style and beauty.
A global event of the magnitude of the Cannes Film Festival just cannot be contained indoors. It spills out onto the Croisette, the city’s “It” locations, and the rooftops of luxury hotels. And now also to Cours Félix Faure, the small but lively pedestrian street connecting the Palais des Festivals to the city hall. Along it, the City of Cannes and fashion magazine Madame Figaro jointly present Mode & Cinéma, an outdoor exhibition of large-scale totems featuring some of the magazine’s best photography over the past twenty years.
The exhibition blurs boundaries: cinema, fashion, and advertising all merge into one visual language. Actors become models, photos become storytelling devices, and the street becomes a gallery. And it reinforces Cannes as a “brand” and a city that curates an identity built on glamour, art, and spectacle.
Video via CannesWebTV on YouTube
Madame Figaro’s portfolio belongs to that ecosystem. For twenty years, it has contributed to the way Cannes looks, and by extension, how it is remembered.
The photographs themselves come from a long-running editorial project launched in 2006. Each year, actors passing through Cannes are photographed in collaboration with fashion houses, producing images that sit somewhere between portrait, campaign, and film still. Over time, the series has built a consistent look – recognisable not because of any single image, but because of the repetition of a formula: a known face, a constructed setting, and a strong emphasis on styling as a narrative tool. Seen in the pages of a magazine, these images function as part of a larger editorial flow. Seen here, they have to hold their ground on their own.
This could be where the story ends, and for the casual passerby it does. But if one zooms out, the real purpose comes into focus.
Photo © Jean-François Robert 2009
While the festival is famously exclusive, this kind of installation tries to counterbalance that by giving the public access to its imagery and mythology. It helps democratize Cannes, at least symbolically. And that shift in context is the exhibition’s real subject. The passerby is not inside a screening, and not on the red carpet… they are just moving through the city. And suddenly, towering above, there is a stylised image of a famous actor, lit and posed like a character in an unwritten film, dressed in couture. Then another. Then another. It feels less like visiting an exhibition and more like walking through the collective dream Cannes is selling every year.
By bringing those images into the street, the exhibition makes that tacit goal visible. It does not reframe them as artworks in the traditional sense, nor does it attempt to historicise them with heavy commentary. Instead, it quietly places them back into circulation, but in a different register: more accessible and sustainable, less elitist and flashy – and therefore so much more relevant to our times. Because luxury without giving back has become passé, très passé.
David Lisnard, maire de Cannes, et Anne-Florence Schmitt inaugurent l’exposition – photo © Mairie de Cannes
The outdoor exhibition Madame Figaro, Mode & Cinéma on Cours Félix Faure runs through 23 May 2026
VENUE DETAILS
Exposition Madame Figaro, Mode & Cinéma
Cours Félix Faure
06400 Cannes
PHOTO CREDITS
- All photos courtesy Mairie de Cannes and as credited
- Lead image © Mairie de Cannes
- Video as credited
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