The 17 All-Time Best Director Fits From the Cannes Film Festival

Since 1946, the Cannes Film Festival has attracted cinema’s most glamorous stars to the Cote d’Azur. Thanks to the festival’s famously strict (and increasingly outdated) dress code, you’ll find no shortage of top-level evening wear—dinner jackets and tuxedos—on the iconic red-carpet steps of the Palais des Festivals. But it’s often between the flashy events—during rare moments of downtime by the glimmering French Riviera, or interviews with the press on luxury hotel balconies—that you’ll catch glimpses of real, righteous personal style.

The attendees most often delivering that top-end style are not, as you might assume, the actors. In my humble and slightly biased opinion—as the proprietor of the @DirectorFits Instagram account—a director’s approach to dressing often says so much about their filmmaking, their view of the world, and where they are in that particular moment. And Cannes, with its fit-pic-ready backdrops and 76 years of history, offers a particularly rich buffet of great director looks to dissect.

With the latest edition of the festival kicking off tomorrow, I’ve curated a handful of my personal favorite Cannes director fits. Here’s what you can learn—and what you should steal—from the coolest filmmakers’ wardrobes.