The 2026 Cannes Film Festival red carpet has been delivering a wave of nostalgia for lovers of archival fashion: Bella in icy-blue 2003 LV! Simone Ashley in crimson McQueen, once sported by Cate Blanchett and Gisele Bündchen! Ruth Negga in caped and creamy Ossie Clark!

Royal history fans have also shared in the delights of the Croisette, care of the young French-Russian actor Anastasia Andrushkevich, who paid tribute to an iconic Princess Diana look.

Andrushkevich, who was attending the premiere of Fjord, wore a pale blue gown custom designed by Mehmet Ozden, which mirrored what the late royal wore to the 1987 Cannes Festival.

Diana’s look at the time was also a sweet sartorial homage to cinema. Designed by Catherine Walker (a favorite still today of Princess Catherine’s), the princess’s dress directly referenced the Edith Head-designed costume Grace Kelly very famously sported in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1955 To Catch a Thief. (Fittingly, it was also filmed on the French Riviera.) The cool shade of blue was chosen deliberately to reflect her icy character, as Hitchcock explained in an interview with François Truffaut in 1962: “I deliberately photographed Grace Kelly ice-cold and I kept cutting to her profile, looking classical, beautiful, and very distant.” Both gowns are considered important parts of fashion history. Princess Diana’s draped gown was sold at auction in 2003, for $108,000.

While Kelly’s original dress featured two shades of blue and a fuller ballgown skirt, Diana’s reinterpretation was grounded in a monochromatic palette and a slimmer, more modern silhouette. The soft, chiffony blue gown was strapless with a singular light scarf wrapped around her neck and left to cascade elegantly down the back like a sweeping train, which also accentuated her décolletage.

To complete the look at the time, Princess Diana selected coordinating accessories, including an evening bag crafted from matching fabric and a pair of light-blue satin pumps—chosen over high heels so as not to tower over then-Prince Charles. Striking chandelier earrings, set with diamonds and sapphires, caught the glare of the camera flashes.

Born in 2001, Anastasia Andrushkevich hails from Rostov-on-Don, Russia, and is an actor as well as a professional pianist. Andrushkevich’s 2026 iteration was similarly sophisticated, in a dusty sky-blue hue with a layered strapless bodice that featured horizontal draping wrapped around the torso. The fluid, flowing skirt fanned around her as she walked. Her neck was adorned with a matching thin scarf. The only marked difference was in the bodice—Diana’s had a criss-crossing, geometric cut waist that dropped below her hips.

Andrushkevich’s hair and glam also riffed on Diana’s, wearing her blonde lob in bouncy, voluminous waves parted to the side. For jewelry, she opted for spindly, serpent-like silver earrings and a delicate bracelet.

Diana and Grace were said to have shared a deeply intimate moment upon one of the first times they met. As J. Randy Taraborelli writes in the biography Once Upon a Time: Behind the Fairy Tale of Princess Grace and Prince Rainier, Grace (then 51) and Diana (then 19) met at a royal engagement in 1981, just months after Diana became engaged to Charles. Diana, he writes, burst into tears in front of Grace—explaining her fears over her impending wedding and disintegrating privacy, and one princess offered advice and comfort to the other.

The Princess of Wales decided to wear this same blue gown from Cannes once again on September 19, 1989, in London, for the lavish gala premiere of the celebrated musical Miss Saigon at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. Revisiting such a significant gown just two years later was an unusual and bold choice for a royal figure of her stature, yet it served to underscore the special bond Diana felt with this particular sartorial creation. On that occasion in London, Diana chose to reinterpret the outfit by slightly altering her hairstyle and wearing different jewels.

When Grace tragically died in 1982, Diana attended her funeral in Monaco. Speaking to her own biographer, Andrew Morton, Diana described Grace as “wonderful and serene.” “there was troubled water under her. I saw that,” she said perceptively. Diana’s sartorial choices were always well considered, and her Cannes Film Festival look was imbued with personal meaning. This is a tribute that lives as long as a floaty scarf blowing down that famed Croisette.