The “Scissor Arses”

The preference for European-style dress, first timidly adopted in the previous decades, accelerated in the time of autonomy, as town dwellers cast off local costume in favour of the dictates of European fashion.

Men's baggy breeches gave way to trousers, tall boots were ousted by patent leather shoes and the fez by the straw boater and the homburg. In the beginning, followers of European fashion were treated with derision, as insinuated by the epithet "scissor arses". The ascendancy of European fashion was more marked in women's dress. Western clothes, shoes and accessories such as eye-catching hats and fans won over the town's female population. Muslim women also gave in to this temptation, even if not abandoning the traditional veil.