Fashion
The Dress Code of Revolution
What you wore during the revolution declared your class and your politics — and it could be a matter of life and death.
Royal Pomp
The elaborate (and expensive) dress of the royal court left little doubt about position and rank. In fact, it could be illegal to dress above one’s station.
Queen Marie Antoinette was reviled by the people for her expensive tastes. She was called ‘Madame Deficit’ for her supposed role in the bankruptcy of the nation.
There’s no question who the king is.
The Tricolor Cockade
The relative simplicity of the National Guard’s tricolor uniform blends in with the common people, emphasizing their role as peacekeepers among all the classes.
In this contemporary cartoon, a two-faced Antoine Barnave, a leader of the moderate Feuillant Club, is mocked as simultaneously wearing the red-white-and-blue dress of “the people” and the over-the-top splendor of “the court.”
The Marquis de Lafayette designed the tricolor cockade as a conciliatory symbol, combining the red and blue of the Paris flag with the white of the Bourbon monarchy. It was soon co-opted as an emblem of more radical views.
The Liberty Cap
The liberty cap became de rigeur during the revolution. In some times and places, it could be dangerous to be caught without one.
Maximilian Robespierre was a walking contradiction. Though leader of the Jacobins, he never wore what was sometimes called the Jacobin cap. He stuck with his aristocratic white whig until the bitter end.
The liberty cap harkens back to the Phrygian hat worn by freed slaves in antiquity.
In a potent and humiliating symbol of his submission, a violent mob stormed into the palace and forced King Louis to don a liberty cap and drink a toast to the revolution.
Sans Culottes
A sans culottes’ attire was often not complete without some weaponry, particularly the simple pike that became strongly affiliated with their movement. (Indeed, one of the more radical working class neighborhoods renamed itself “The Section of the Pikes.”)
Fashion was so central to socio-political identity that the entire working-class movement was known as those ‘without breeches.’ They wore workers’ trousers instead of, literally, fancy pants. A rough corollary today would be ‘blue collar.’
Golden Youth
After the fall of Robespierre, the ‘red terror’ of the Jacobins was followed by a reactionary ‘white terror’ of the monarchists. Aristocratic youth adopted deliberately elaborate dress and thus were called variously muscadin (for the ‘musk’ they wore), the incroyables, or the juenness doreé. Thus attired, they formed roving gangs that attacked anyone wearing a liberty cap.