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Whistled in 2012, Cécile Duflot's patterned dress returns to the National Assembly

2022-06-29T17:03:04.588Z


On July 17, 2012, it hissed harshly during a session of questions to the government at the National Assembly. The reasons for the heckling? The dress worn by Cécile Duflot, then Minister for Territorial Equality and Housing. Ten years later, fate recalled this garment to the Hemicycle.


The question of the dress worn in the Assembly is far from being trivial.

For her first steps in the Hemicycle, Marie-Charlotte Garin, newly elected ecologist deputy for the 3rd constituency of the Rhône, wanted to remember her by wearing Cécile Duflot's patterned dress which had aroused whistles and mockery in July 2012. A tool of communication (almost) like another.

The idea was prompted by the former minister when she was elected in mid-June.

The young elected explains that this return of the Boden dress on the political scene aims to claim "a transmission" with the former minister, now director general of the NGO Oxfam France.

As well as to send a message “to any elected officials of the misogynistic and sexist RN, tell them that this space is not yours”.

It is a "symbol" against "sexist and sexual violence that does not stop at the doors of the Hemicycle", she insisted to journalists.

Full screen

Cécile Duflot in her blue patterned dress at the National Assembly.

(Paris, July 17, 2012.) AFP

Cries and whistles

The story of the dress is heavy with meaning.

It is a simple model with three-quarter sleeves, the length of which stops at the knee.

Fitted at the waist, it is cut in a fabric with large blue patterns on a white background, without a major neckline.

It marked the spans of the Palais Bourbon in a totally unexpected way.

It was July 17, 2012. Cécile Duflot, then Minister for Territorial Equality and Housing under François Hollande, is preparing to answer questions that a deputy had just sent her about Greater Paris.

But impossible for her to speak, cries and whistles burst out.

In question: his outfit, which changes from a trouser suit to dark shades.

It underlines a form of femininity and this irritates some, like Patrick Balkany, then deputy and mayor of Levallois, recalls the

Dressing in politics, the clothes of women in power 1936-2022

.

“Perhaps she had put on this dress so that we wouldn't listen to what she had to say,” the politician told

Le Figaro

.

Comments demonstrating a certain obsession with appearance, which the historian analyzes as follows in her study: "Women are constantly suspected of diverting attention from their words through their clothes and the enhancement of their bodies" .

In 2016, the outfit found a second life at the Museum of Decorative Arts, among the 400 garments and accessories presented in the exhibition "Proper attire required, when the garment is scandalous" before being returned to its owner, who postponed a few times since.

But the dress did not change cultural habits so much.

Ten years later, it is still a question of denouncing ordinary sexism in the Hemicycle.

Source: lefigaro

All life articles on 2022-06-29

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