Astonishingly it was only last week that France finally repealed a law dating from 1799 which banned women from wearing pants in public.
The original law, introduced just after the Revolution by Paris’s then police chief, was intended to prevent women from dressing like men, lest they be mistaken for revolutionaries.
The law was later amended on several occasions, once in 1909 to allow women to wear trousers while riding a bicycle.
This quaint law stayed in place despite numerous attempts to have it stricken from the books.
In 2010 Green Party members tried to have it repealed but officials at the Paris police Headquarters refused noting that it meant “removing a piece of judicial archaeology”.
Presumably, there are many examples of fusty and anachronistic laws to be found in the French archives but it took Najat Valluad-Belkacem, France’s Minister for Women’s Rights to have the law null and voided.
As she tartly said: “It belongs in a museum. The ordinance is incompatible with the principles of equality between men and women.”
Clearly famed fashion designer Coco Chanel was ignorant of the law when she liberated women in the 1920s and 30s by introducing trousers as a chic fashion statement.
So too Yves Saint Laurent who introduced his ultra-sexy tuxedo for women “Le Smoking” in the 70s.
It would have been interesting indeed to witness authorities actually apply the law during a Paris Fashion Week.
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