On 8 Brumaire, year II (29 October 1793), the Convention decreed that freedom of dress was a basic human right: ‘Everyone is free to wear whatever clothing and accessories of his sex that he finds pleasing.’ This was an odd decree in many ways. It decreed as a right something we take for granted, the freedom to wear what we choose, and it was passed during the Terror, when individual rights were routinely curtailed. It also contradicted itself, for if its first article guaranteed freedom of dress, its second stated that all previous laws on dress remained in force, and these included one which impinged on individual freedom: the requirement that all French citizens wear a red, white and blue cockade in public.