Red Carpet Stories
Gestures, glances, and icons that turned the red carpet into a living work of art
A Runway Between Dream and Reality
Each September, Venice’s Lido becomes more than an island, it becomes a stage. Drenched in golden light and cinematic tension, it transforms into the soul of international film. And at its heart, where the sea meets Moorish marble and the curtains of the Hotel Excelsior drift with Adriatic breeze, the red carpet stretches out like a promise.
It’s more than spectacle, it’s ritual. A choreography of pauses and poise, where every step echoes with meaning and every glance becomes a scene. A journey through cinema, style, and memory. On this carpet, every entrance is a moment etched in time.
Stars and Stories: The Golden Age of Cinema in Venice
In the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s, the Excelsior stood as a beacon of European glamour. Beneath its arabesque arches and along sunlit terraces, cinema’s icons found their perfect backdrop. Sophia Loren in ivory satin, Audrey Hepburn with gloved elegance and a gaze that whispered poetry, Alain Delon and Claudia Cardinale radiating a charm that felt like myth on film. These weren’t just actors; they were legends stepping into history.
Fashion then was more than adornment, it was narrative. Silks told stories. Silhouettes sculpted moods. Details were deliberate. Each look was a script of its own, performed without words. And the Excelsior? A stage that blurred the line between real and imagined. Not merely a hotel, but part of Italy’s cultural screenplay, an emblem of elegance the world watched in awe.
The Red Carpet as Living Art: Unforgettable Moments
The red carpet here has no ordinary path, it breathes. It remembers.
Think of Lady Diana’s ethereal arrival by water taxi, grace carried by waves. Or Cate Blanchett, luminous and statuesque, whose gown caught the light like a painting in motion. Tilda Swinton, ever otherworldly, made each step a performance.
But true enchantment lives in the spaces between, the stillness after a flash, the quiet applause, the knowing glances between Excelsior guests that escape the lens. Each edition of the Venice Film Festival adds a brushstroke to this masterpiece of moments. And it’s often the most fleeting ones that leave the most lasting mark.
Contemporary Glamour: Today’s Icons Between Cinema and Lifestyle
Today’s red carpet welcomes a new kind of icon, one shaped by expression, authenticity, and personal grace. Zendaya, in gowns that move like sculpture. Timothée Chalamet, rewriting masculinity with tailored ease and quiet rebellion.
The aesthetic has evolved. Less about formality, more about feeling. Less perfection, more presence.
Style, now, is a way of inhabiting the moment. How you arrive. How you pause. How you inhabit both the spotlight and the silence.
At Hotel Excelsior Venice Lido Resort, this modern lifestyle takes form in gestures, not grandiosity. In an entrance at sunset by boat. In a quiet drink beneath fluttering curtains. In a shared glance before the screening begins. Here, elegance doesn’t need to announce itself, it’s simply felt. The kind of welcome that makes you the lead without stepping on stage. And perhaps that’s the rarest luxury of all: to feel part of a story that lingers.
Because sometimes, all it takes is an entrance to turn a stay into a memory that plays like a timeless film.
