Carine Roitfeld Producing Runway Show for AmFAR Gala in Cannes

This story first appeared in the May 25 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine.

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The famed amfAR ball at Cannes, which benefits Cinema Against AIDS and is in its 19th year, has called on everyone from Harvey Weinstein and longtime auctioneer Sharon Stone (Alec Baldwin recently was tapped as co-chair of the event) to Elton John (who once performed with Ringo Starr) to promote the cause, to the tune of $70 million.

But this year, for the May 24 event at Hotel du Cap, organizers are going one bigger and better for Euro glamour: They’ve hired former Vogue Paris editor in chief and longtime stylist Carine Roitfeld to stage a runway show featuring models in 20 designer dressesmade for the event, all black. No names yet, but because Roitfeld was Tom Ford’s longtime muse (she worked as a consultant when Ford was at Gucci and YSL for six years) and she has styled the past two Chanel campaigns, we can speculate that Ford and Karl Lagerfeld designswill be among them.

Janet Jackson, Kylie Minogue, Berenice Bejo, Bollywood actress Aishwarya Rai and designer and amFAR chairman Kenneth Cole are expected to attend this year’s gala.

Roitfeld, who held the top position at French Vogue for 10 years before stepping down in 2011, has also previously styled campaigns for Missoni and Calvin Klein.

Meanwhile, director Fabien Constant’s still-being-shot French documentary about Roitfeld, Mademoiselle C, also will visit Cannes seeking a distributor. Constant, who directed the French TV doc Marc Jacobs & Louis Vuitton, is following Roitfeld during the production of her upcoming fashion glossy CR Fashion Book, which launches in September. The film includes interviewswith Ford, Lagerfeld and Donatella Versace.