2016 Venice Film Festival

Body text: As summer winds down, fashion is taking a breath. The Venice Film Festival is about to start followed shortly by the HFPA/InStyle Party at the Toronto Film Festival,and fresh trends should begin to surface.

As we’ve been predicting, the stack heel is starting to dominate on the red carpet. The sensual stiletto will never disappear; it’s a classic, but watch for the chunky heel to become the shoe of choice as the year progresses, reaching dominance in 2017.

The 73rd Venice Film Festival officially ends on Saturday, September 10, with the presentation of the awards to this year's winners. But we're already saying arrivederci to the Lido, moving on to Toronto, the next big cinema get-together.

Summer wanes and so does the 73rd edition of the Venice Film Festival. The Lido will soon be back to its calm rhythms, as the movie circus decamps for further stops on the festival trail - Canada's Toronto International Film Festival, from September 8 to 18, Spain's San Sebastian, from 16 to 24; and, in October, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Andrew Garfield plays Desmond Doss in Mel Gibson’s true-life epic Hacksaw Ridge. A Virginia farm boy who enlisted in the army as a medic during World War 2 but steadfastly clung to his pacifist 7th Day Adventist faith refusing to touch a weapon, Doss was initially court-martialed by the army but having won the right to his conscientious objection and later proved uncommon bravery in the Pacific saving scores of wounded comrades while wholly unarmed in the face of fierce fighting.

All festivals are, by their own nature, a perfect environment for promotion. The most spectacular feats of publicity are usually reserved for Venice's younger cousin, Cannes, but Lido & Lagoon have their own particular dose of look-at-me-strategies.

If the festival’s worth is judged by the opening, things augur well for this 73rd edition of the Venice Film Festival. Damien Chazelle’s endearing, cinephile, unabashedly romantic musical La La Land is still one of the most buzzed about titles here.

One of the most unique aspects of the Venice Film Festival is how intimate it feels, compared to similar grade AA events in the festival circuit. Maybe because it takes place on a resort island that exudes calm and relaxation, maybe because it's infused with warm Italian joy de vivre, Venice brings audiences and movies, stars and fans as close together as they can be without causing a conflagration.

The weekend arrives noisy and busy on the Lido. It's the ideal frame for parties, celebrations and assorted special events.

Yellow, color and nudes continue on track at this year’s Venice Film Festival. The trend is to be sedate and shocking simultaneously – oops did I forget my petticoat or did I really want to walk the red carpet in my undies with some very pretty net as a distraction? Yellow continued to be a choice – from muted gold to glimmering mustard and daisy fresh bright yellow, Jennifer Lopez’s Golden Globe statement has stayed.