Hooray for all the French fashion ladies, who today dance in the streets of Paris in their pantalons - joyous at the news they may now wear trousers in public without being carted off to the cells.
France's Minister of Women's Rights Najat Vallaud-Belkacam has revoked a 200-year-old law that forbid the distasteful practice:
"'This order was aimed, first of all, at limiting the access of women to certain offices or occupations by preventing them from dressing in the manner of men. This law is incompatible with the principles of equality between men and women which is laid out in the Constitution and in France's European commitments," she said, as reported in Le Parisien.
The decree, passed in 1799, was amended at the turn of the century to allow women to wear trousers only "if the woman is holding a bicycle handlebar or the reins of a horse".
It first came to be after the French revolution, when Parisian ladies started getting lippy and demanding the right to wear trousers. The regime that took over when the monarchy fell was alarmed by the idea of women's equality, thinking it could weaken their stronghold, so banned pants to keep things in check.
