Cannes red carpet gets second life as handbags, hats or slippers

After being walked for two weeks by stars from Tom Cruise to Rihanna, the legendary red carpets of the Cannes film festival are set for a second life thanks to an upcycling charity and some environmentally conscious designers.

The red carpets were replaced daily at the festival, which ended on May 24, with organisers handing over 1.5 tonnes of fine red material to a non-profit organisation in the port city of Marseille.

The carpets now sit on pallets or in black waste bags in a warehouse used by the La Reserve des Arts in the deprived northern suburbs of Marseille where they are being sorted, cleaned and prepared for re-use.

Some of them have small holes -- possibly a result of hosting all those towering stilettoes -- while others have been marked by footsteps or scuffs.

"By reconditioning them, we're helping to reduce the environmental impact of the event -- something the festival is aware of," Jeanne Re, coordinator at La Reserve des Arts, told AFP during a visit on Wednesday.

The charity specialises in re-using or "upcycling" products used by the fashion, theatre or other entertainment industries, finding new lives for items that might otherwise have ended up as waste.

The approach helps to reduce landfill and is seen as a response to growing public concern about the volume of single-use items used to put on public events.

But some environmental groups believe so-called second-life policies can result in "greenwashing", leading organisers and companies to tout their recycling policies rather than focusing on reducing their overall consumption.

Cruise footsteps

The Cannes carpet is being resold at just one euro a kilo, Re telling AFP that amounted to 33 cents per square metre -- an "unbeatable" price.

She added that the goal was to make it "as accessible to as many of our members as possible".

Elsa Ramouni-Yordikian, an artist and member who has been using the red carpets for the last four years, told AFP she had used the material for handbags, bucket hats, glasses cases and even bags for wine bottles.

Some were "quite unique pieces", she said of her work with the charity Les Nippones.

She recently showcased her creations made with the 2024 carpet in an exhibition in Marseille titled "Dress like a Movie Star".

"The fact that it comes from a famous festival and is recycled locally -- that makes sense to us," she said.

Production of synthetic materials like the red carpets will "never stop, there will always be more, just like festivals and trade shows, so we need to find ways to give them new value", she said.

The top prize for best film at this year's Cannes Festival went to dissident Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi for his highly political movie "It Was Just an Accident".

The red carpets were walked by a host of entertainment world A-listers from Cruise and Rihanna, who accompanied her rapper partner A$AP Rocky, as well as Halle Berry, Scarlett Johansson and Robert De Niro.

Source: AFP