To Pouf or not to Pouf

Would you believe me if I said one of the early conflicts in France during the time or Revolution involved arguments over fashion?
No... I have not had any Guinness today.

So this is a French Revolutionary dude...

(thanks wikipedia)

dapper fellow

See that thing on his hat, its called a cockade...and the red white and blue ones were a fashionable way to say...hey I support the revolution.  There were also poufs that members of the National Guard (revolutionary dudes too) wore to show their enlistment in local militias... kind of like an "in your face" gesture towards men enlisted in the French Military who took their orders from the King. Well, I am reading a book titled... Revolution & Political Conflict in the French Navy by Cormack and he discusses this crisis in the Naval base town of Toulon where the Commandant of the Navy would not allow the base dockworkers to wear the poufs of the National Guard...for obvious reasons... and he even let them wear the cockades if they wanted, but wearing a pouf of a pretty much offensive armed force might have caused some instability in an already tense situation.

This caused a hailstorm of bad... and contributed to Revolutionary tensions....

Never think accessories are not dangerous!