Bella Hadid says she is ‘embarrassed’ by dress she wore to Cannes in 2016

Bella Hadid has opened up about some of her memorable fashion moments, with the supermodel revealing that there is one look that she feels “embarrassed” by.

The 24-year-old reflected on a few of her red carpet looks during a new episode of Vogue’sLife in Looks YouTube series, where she admitted that she doesn’t have positive memories when it comes to the red Alexandre Vauthier gown with the waist-high slit that she wore to the 2016 Cannes Film Festival because it fit a persona of her rather than her actual style.

“OK so this is apparently a very iconic red dress moment. And this dress, Alexandre Vauthier made,” Hadid said, adding: “I was nervous in this dress. I look very sexual and all these things.”

The supermodel then revealed that, at the time, she was still “nervous about cameras and nervous about having a lot of makeup on,” and had concerns about the dress’s slit, before admitting that she still gets “embarrassed” of the moment.

“I kind of get embarrassed of this moment still, even though the dress is gorgeous,” Hadid continued. “It’s just, again, doesn’t feel so much like me. And I think that this was the start of the Bella persona that everyone sees is me.

“That’s my alter ego. That’s Belinda. I’m just so the opposite of her. She’s very va-va-voom. You know, bless her, love her, she was very nervous.”

This is not the first time Hadid has spoken candidly about pressure to portray a certain image, as she told Vogue during an interview for the magazine’s 2021 September cover that she felt she had to embrace a “sexbot” alter ego early on in her career.

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“It’s like there were two Bellas - me, this person in the process of figuring out who she was, and ‘Bella Hadid’ the alter ego, who was, I dunno, a sexbot who goes out every night?” Hadid said of her experience entering the modelling industry at 17.

Elsewhere in her new interview with Vogue, the model reflected on some of her other red carpet looks, such as the Schiaparelli Haute Couture long-sleeve black dress and golden lung necklace she wore to the premiere of Three Floors (Tres Piani) at the Cannes Film Festival in July.

According to Hadid, the accessory wasn’t as “heavy as one would expect,” nor was she worried about whether it would lead to a wardrobe malfunction.

“It was actually quite fine, honestly,” she said, adding: “I did a little cup check before I got out of the car and that was it. I was like: ‘If it’s going to happen, it’s going to happen now. So, I’m about to walk this carpet and if in five minutes from now, there are pictures of my breasts everywhere, then that’s what was supposed to happen.’”

However, Hadid did acknowledge that walking the red carpet in the Schiaparelli gown, designed by Daniel Roseberry, was “very bizarre” because of the dress’s low-neckline.

“When I would look down, you could see everything. So it was very bizarre walking onto the carpet in places you wouldn’t usually have a breeze,” the model recalled.