What is it about the Cannes Film Festival, which wrapped its 75th year this past weekend, that inspires some of the most unabashedly glamorous, breathtaking fashion?

For Kate Young, who styles Julianne Moore as well as a number of Cannes regulars like Michelle Williams and Sienna Miller, it’s the only red carpet “that is really photogenic,” she said in a phone call last week. The ocean light gives everyone a pure, rich glow. The length and width mean the carpet itself is vast, so that stars are usually photographed walking, rather than static. (“Step and repeats are the worst,” she said, adding that the angle at which we’re used to seeing clothing photographed for premieres and award shows is “the most unflattering way to photograph a dress or a woman. Clothes look better walking.”) The photographers are often positioned on a raised platform, so that actors are captured from above, creating a sense that the paparazzi are gawking down from a heavenly perch.

In short, it is one of the only red carpets expansive enough to accommodate some of the world’s biggest and most opulent dresses. And one of the only events, really, whose premise fits the occasion of these gowns. The scope of its programming accommodates both monolith blockbusters like Top Gun and indies like Jesse Eisenberg’s directorial debut, When You Finish Saving the World, which stars Moore as a mother running a shelter for domestic violence victims while also parenting a teenage son. Cannes encompasses both the Hollywood machine operating at its zenith and the smaller films that give the industry artistic credibility. Actors, Young added, “are usually super proud of [the film] if they’re at Cannes.” They tend…