“When you go to a wedding, overall, you dress. As we are not far-left, as we are not Islamo-leftist, we come, we respect the institution and indeed women have suit jackets or pretty tops”, was indignant the deputy RN Laure Lavalette, Friday July 22 on franceinfo. The elected member of the National Rally denounces, like the deputy LR Eric Ciotti, the outfits worn by the Insoumis deputies.
Asked about the proposal of deputy LR to make the tie compulsory for deputies in the Assembly, Laure Lavalette approved the idea. “For a very long time the internal rules stipulated that women had to have their arms covered”she argued in particular.
The obligatory tie in the Assembly? ➡️ “As we are not from the far left, as we are not Islamo-leftists, we come, we respect the institution”, for Laure Lavalette, who “does not not make a mantra”. The deputies of the Nupes “are not in respect of the institution” pic.twitter.com/UmJA0GWuL7
— franceinfo (@franceinfo) July 22, 2022
I ask the President of the National Assembly, the obligation to wear a tie in the hemicycle of the Palais Bourbon to prevent certain deputies, in particular from France Insoumise, from allowing themselves to wear more and more relaxed outfits. pic.twitter.com/WvdOvG0XQ0
— Eric Ciotti (@ECiotti) July 21, 2022
In reality, for a very long time, the rules of the Assembly said nothing about the compulsory dress of deputies in the hemicycle. The only rules that were valid were rules of use. However, the Assembly’s press service assures that it is not aware that an unwritten rule on the “covered arms” women existed. A former MP also has no memory of it. Socialist Marie-Françoise Clergeau spent 20 years in the hemicycle and says she has never heard of such an obligation.
Among the rules of use, however, there is a ban on trousers for women. There is no shortage of stories of women recounting being turned away from the Palais Bourbon because they wore trousers. Michèle Aliot-Marie, for example, has already said that in the early 1970s a usher from the Assembly had barred her way because of her pants.
The General Instruction of the Bureau of the National Assembly ended up inscribing a black-and-white rule in 2018. Article 9 provides that “the clothing adopted by the deputies in the hemicycle must remain neutral and be similar to a city outfit”. This outfit “cannot be the pretext for the manifestation of the expression of any opinion: the wearing of any conspicuous religious sign, a uniform, logos or commercial messages or slogans of a political nature is thus prohibited in particular”, is it also specified. No details are provided on what a “city clothes”. The Assembly’s press service explains that it “it is up to the President to assess whether the outfit worn by a deputy corresponds to the requirements set out in this article”.
Before 2018, the question of clothing was customary. Por men, the obligatory tie has long been the custom. In 2008 the deputy François de Rugy had refused to wear it and a meeting of the office of the assembly had then recalled its obligatory nature in the hemicycle. But in 2017, the story was no longer the same. The Bureau rightly considered that since no regulatory provision fixed the dress code of deputies, there was no reason to oblige men to wear a jacket and a tie.
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