The hoodie in France: one garment, opposite meanings

Images of looting, fires and clashes between French police and black-clad groups with their hoods up and faces masked spread around the world after the protests of 17 October 2026. In an explainer published on 31 October, RFI uses those scenes to trace how the hooded sweatshirt became one garment with sharply opposed meanings, from medieval Paris to today’s school playgrounds.

What happened

According to RFI, the violence on 17 October broke out on the fringes of a large mobilisation against the rising cost of living. The marchers included Gilets jaunes (the “yellow vest” protest movement) and lycéens, French secondary school students, many of them in hoodies, who came out to protest about their conditions of education. RFI’s journalist Nohria Retiel sets out the article’s argument plainly: the same garment, used in very different ways.

The article draws heavily on Denis Bruna, a fashion historian and author of Petites histoires de nos vêtements (“Little stories of our clothes”), published by Éditions Textuel. Bruna told RFI that the earliest images of the hood go back to Roman Gaul, where Priapus, god of gardens, is shown in a small hooded cape. In the Middle Ages the hood was sewn onto monastic robes, a sign of humility that let religious people withdraw from the gaze of others.

Suspicion followed quickly. “In the history of Western dress, we do not like clothes that are loose or that hide,” Bruna said. The oldest text he has studied dates from 1399, when Charles VI, King of France, banned the hood in Paris because robbers were using the dark to strip passers-by. The ordinance called them the “sans visages”, the faceless ones. Later criticism targeted women. Around 1770, hooded coats were accused of helping wearers hide stolen goods or an adulterous pregnancy. Around 1840, wide-brimmed bonnets known as capotes hid the faces of well-off women so well that they were nicknamed the “invisibles”.

The modern hoodie came from sport. RFI reports that the American brand Champion is said to have developed it in the 1930s to keep athletes warm before and after training, citing comments by Christopher Haggerty, then the brand’s chief executive, to the magazine i-D. Workers in New York cold stores and on building sites took it up, as did cadets at the US Military Academy, and universities printed their names across it. Two 1976 films, Rocky and Marathon Man, linked it to grit and determination.

In the Bronx, the hoodie travelled with the rise of hip-hop. Graffiti pioneer Eric “Deal” Felisbret told Rolling Stone in April 2012 that the people wearing hoodies on the street were the people others looked up to. Breakdancers liked the freedom of movement. Graffiti artists and West Coast skaters valued the cover it gave them. That same ability to hide a face fed an association with gangs and crime. Ralph Lauren and Tommy Hilfiger made it fashionable streetwear in the 1990s, yet in 2005 a shopping centre in Kent, in the United Kingdom, banned it.

RFI describes the death of Trayvon Martin in February 2012 as a turning point. The 17-year-old Black American was shot by George Zimmerman, a member of a neighbourhood watch patrol, after Zimmerman reported him to police as “suspicious” while he was wearing a hoodie. Thousands joined the “Million Hoodie March” in New York on 21 March 2012, and Zimmerman’s acquittal in 2013 revived the movement. Around the same time, Mark Zuckerberg’s hoodie among suited investors read as a statement of power. In late 2018, British entrepreneur Cephas Williams launched “56 Black Men”, portraits of 56 Black men from different backgrounds, all in hoodies, to challenge the stereotype.

Why it matters if you live in France

The article is a reminder of the legal backdrop. RFI notes that since 2010 it has been illegal in France to cover your face in public spaces, whether with a full veil, a balaclava or an unauthorised mask. A hood on its own is not the issue. The concern, as Bruna puts it when discussing 17 October, is concealment: hoods pulled down and combined with masks over the face.

For parents of teenagers, the explainer offers a calmer reading. Among lycéens, Bruna says, the hoodie follows other logics. Dressing like your classmates helps you fit in. It is comfortable, signals a relaxed style without effort, and is worn regardless of gender. Pulling up the hood can mean a wish to be left alone, or simply protection from cold and rain. RFI illustrates this with protesters marching peacefully in the rain in Lille, in northern France, on 24 October 2026.

For anyone who follows fashion in Paris, Bruna points out that since the start of the 21st century, luxury houses have often borrowed from the street, changing colours and motifs. The way it is worn also changes the message: luxury customers usually let the hood hang down their back. “Every garment is a code,” he told RFI, adding that none of the clothes we wear today carries the same code it did one or two centuries ago.

What to watch next

The hoodie’s meaning is likely to stay contested while the cost-of-living protests continue to draw both students and the masked groups at their fringes. RFI’s conclusion is that the garment, now found everywhere from school playgrounds to luxury catwalks, has not lost its power to arouse suspicion. As the article puts it, everything depends on who wears it, how they wear it and how others look at them. Readers who want the longer history can turn to Bruna’s book, available from Éditions Textuel.

Source: RFI