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Comment by ulizzle | Hacker News Reader

No, It’s not about that. This was a cultural reaction to the excesses and cruelty of the French ruling classes.

And both men and women changed their styles, Im not sure why they don’t mention that. No one wanted to be mistaken by a jacobin and have a bomb thrown at your lap. Women stopped imitating Marie Antoinette way before she was beheaded in the pangs of birth of the reign of terror

The obvious historical parallels are obvious because what generally happens is that chaos can only build up so much until the people rebel and kill everyone in power. That’s why the Egyptians mentioned “maat” (order) all the time, but there are some very good movies on this time period even on netflix

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Then this would be isolated to France and you would expect things to normalize as people forgot about the revolution. But things never "normalized", men still prefer to not wear bright colored clothes.

> And both men and women changed their styles

Maybe in France right after the revolution, but if I look at dresses today I see all that gaudiness in female dresses but not in male.

Not really, at that time cultural norms and trends amongst western society spread from it's cultural center which was France - as it's today with USA. Whole world wears jeans.

It depends on the context. For example, fashion for men and women was all pretty wild in post-war America (imo, specifically during the 80s), but stayed pretty colorful throughout the 2000s, until this decade.

Since the ruling classes have been hammering the message that men are useless it's a normal cultural reaction for men to become more manly. Women instead have been told that sex sells and it does, so that's their cultural reaction to the problems of today.

At least for now; but as disorder keeps mounting, inflation rises, and so on, patience for the regimes falls, and more conservative fashions come back, which means the times for the ruling classes are frail and volatile.

the French revolution didn't just hang out in France. those armies -- Napoleon -- went all over Europe, and so to went a lot of their ideas.

the German revolutions of 1848–1849 for example came out of sparks that the French (and US) revolutions brought (as well as a good dose of Karl M).

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