At the 2026 Cannes Film Festival, Anastasia Andrushkevich arrived at the premiere of Fjord in a pale blue gown that echoed one of Diana, Princess Of Wales’s most recognizable red-carpet looks. The custom Mehmet Ozden design, in dusty sky-blue with a layered strapless bodice and a flowing skirt, was a close modern echo of the dress Diana wore to Cannes in 1987.
Andrushkevich, born in 2001 and from Rostov-on-Don, Russia, wore her blonde lob in bouncy, voluminous waves parted to the side, a styling choice that kept the focus on the gown’s color and shape. She is an actor and a professional pianist, and her appearance landed on a night when the Cannes carpet was already leaning hard into archival references, including an icy-blue 2003 LV dress, a crimson McQueen dress once worn by Cate Blanchett and Gisele Bündchen, and a caped Ossie Clark look worn by Ruth Negga.
Diana’s Cannes gown had its own lineage. Catherine Walker designed the dress, which directly referenced the Edith Head costume Grace Kelly wore in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1955 To Catch a Thief. Diana finished the look with light-blue satin pumps instead of high heels so she would not tower over then-Prince Charles, along with an evening bag made from matching fabric and chandelier earrings set with diamonds and sapphires.
The dress has long carried the weight of fashion history. It was sold at auction in 2003 for $108,000, helping turn it into one of the most closely studied royal gowns of the era. That gave Andrushkevich’s appearance more than a passing resemblance to work from the archives; it placed her squarely inside a story that has moved from cinema to royal pageantry to the resale market.
Grace Kelly and Diana met at a royal engagement in 1981, months after Diana became engaged to Charles, and the connection between the two women has lingered for decades. According to J. Randy Taraborelli, Diana burst into tears in front of Grace Kelly and spoke about her fears over her approaching wedding and the loss of privacy. Hitchcock later told François Truffaut that he had deliberately photographed Kelly ice-cold, repeatedly cutting to her profile so she would appear classical, beautiful and very distant.
That history gives the Cannes revival a sharper edge than a simple nostalgia play. Andrushkevich’s gown did not just revive an old color or silhouette; it revived a chain of references that runs from Hollywood to royalty and back again. On a carpet already crowded with archive nods, her look stood out because it felt both careful and legible, the kind of homage that depends on the viewer knowing exactly what came before.
What comes next is less about one dress than about whether Cannes keeps leaning on fashion history as its loudest language. For now, Andrushkevich has joined the small group of people who have worn a Diana-inspired blue gown in front of cameras and made the reference unmistakable.
