In the ancien régime —pre-Revolutionary France's rigidly hierarchical feudal order—the form, fabric, and color of a garment announced a person's position within that order. It did so systematically and transparently. Dress differences, between aristocrats and commoners and within the aristocracy, openly performed sociopolitical functions—self-affirmation for some, subordination for others. The fact that the common people generally could not afford luxurious dress largely maintained the system. This economic basis was buttressed by the continued issuance of sumptuary laws—laws regulating consumption—that codified dress differences. For the aristocracy these were protectionist measures ensuring their monopoly of luxury and thus luxury's differentiating function. Brocades, linings, furs, feathers, lace, gold and silver trimmings, and expensive dyes were by law the aristocracy's to wear, hence transparent markers of high status.
With feudalism's decline, the clothing system's economic basis eroded. A rising middle class could increasingly afford luxury and, as part of its self-fashioning, emulated the aristocracy in manners and dress. This appropriation of aristocratic styles (with aristocrats' consequent adopting of new styles to differentiate themselves), meant that dress less reliably indicated social position. In the seventeenth century, the aristocracy issued even more sumptuary laws to maintain the clothing system. During Louis XIV's reign (1643-1715), even such details as gold braid and buttons were minutely regulated. These measures failed to discourage the rising middle class. Originally a prerogative of birth and rank, luxury was increasingly claimed by anyone with the desire and means to buy it. As a Parisian attorney observed in 1745, "Today luxury is widespread, and because money rules, everything is topsy-turvy in Paris." The meanings of dress became (temporarily) opaque and fashions pace of change, formerly a slow evolution over centuries, accelerated dramatically. With this, modern fashion emerged as "something adopted temporarily, on the basis of collective but ephemeral preferences."
In 1793, a formal decree was issued that epitomized the rupture: "No person of either sex can force any citizen, male or female, to dress in a particular way..; everyone is free to wear the garment or garb suitable to his or her sex that he or she pleases." Thus did France's Revolution legally mark the end of the ancien régime's dress system.
