These survivors of the old establishment suddenly felt safe again, and adopted a new behavioural trend that mocked guillotine mob humour and the frugality of post-revolutionary life in a radical yet anti-radical display. The number of executions dwindled over the coming months and during the Directoire period, France’s governing body between 17, the extremes of the revolution thawed, leaving the Incroyables and Merveilleuses to blossom. But by 1794, just five years after the infamous storming of the Bastille, a counter-revolutionary event occurred, in which Robespierre himself was deposed and executed the next day by his opponents.

Under the radical new French government, the infamous Jacobin turned power-crazy politician, Maximilien Robespierre, sent thousands of aristocrats, royalists and political opponents to their deaths or to prison in the name of change. Les Incroyables (‘Incredible Men’) and Les Merveilleuses (‘Marvellous Women’) were the respective gender titles given to the proponents of a reactionary movement, led by many of those whose families or themselves had been subject to the treatment and trauma of a post-revolutionary regime. Long before the 20th century punks gave us studs and spiked Mohawks during the social unrest of the late Seventies, the post French Revolutionaries of 1793 gave us blood chokers, ripped corsets and cropped, tangled locks, all aimed at symbolising the horror of the guillotine and ridiculing the very foundations of the post-revolutionary society. In what was essentially a ‘proto punk’ movement of the 18th century, visions of scruffily-clad aristocrats being carted off to the guillotine for public beheadings would launch an morbid tongue-in-cheek fashion trend for the survivors of the revolution. Rarely however, do we mention the subculture that would emerge in the aftermath of it all, morphing into an outrageous public display of aristocratic grunge fashion.

Those of us who paid any attention in history class can probably recount a few key details and players of the French Revolution – there was Marie Antoinette, Louis XVI (AKA Louis the Last) and their posse at Versailles who were eating too much cake the revolutionaries who kicked things off by storming the Bastille prison and an infamous Reign of Terror that ensued, starring the guillotine.

Napoleon total war toons all in one