During the French Revolution one aspect of costume became particularly emblematic of the movement of the people and the upheaval of the aristocratic and bourgeois society of France at the time. This was the short pant, hemmed near the ankles, that displaced the knee-length breeches (culottes) that marked the bourgeois and aristocratic classes. The men who wore the short pant in defiance of the aristocratic fashion called themselves the sans-culotte and in their costume, in solidarity with the lower classes, wanted to personify liberty, equality, and fraternity among the people.

The sans-culottes as political activists organized themselves in sections throughout France and became militant defenders of the ideals they thought would bring about an equality for the French citizen that would end the destructiveness and division of the class system under the monarchy. The sans-culottes were mainly of the less-educated class but with the strength and organization of the revolutionary movement behind them they were able to transform French society, although at the expense of justice and civility as the Revolution progressed and the revolutionaries became more militant. By 1793, a year of terror under which revolutionary tribunals sent nearly half a million ‘enemies of the people’ to imprisonment if not to their deaths, the sans-culottes and the power of Robespierre had succeeded in establishing the Republic.

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The fervor of the sans-culottes under the leadership of the Revolutionary Jacobin leaders marked them as part of the new era of French politics whereby the past, in the symbols of the monarchy, the Ancien Regime, and the church, was laid to rest and a new foundation for a new society was to replace it. *Painting of a typical sans-culotte by Louis-Léopold Boilly (1761-1845) *Painting of Baron de Besenval in his Study by Henri Danloux (1791)

Tags: 1793, Ancien Regime, aristocratic fashion during the French Revolution, bourgeois fashion during the French Revolution, equality, Fashion History, fashion in the French Revolution, fraternity, French bourgeoisie, French History, French Revolution fashion, history of breeches, history of pants, Jacobins, liberty, Revolutionary France, sans culottes fashion, sans-culottes