Red trousers with black side stripe Symbolism
Red trousers with a black side stripe signal the spectacle and discipline of the modern uniformed state. In Édouard Manet’s The Fifer (1866), the vivid red legwear and regulating dark stripe read as an emblem of martial order rather than anecdotal detail, their flat, unmodulated color making authority visible at a glance.
Red trousers with black side stripe in The Fifer
In The Fifer (1866), Édouard Manet isolates a youthful military musician against a gray field, so the uniform’s elements—black tunic, white gaiters, and especially the red trousers with a black side stripe—become the image’s structure. The saturated red legs, articulated by the disciplined stripe, concentrate the picture’s modernity and state presence; treated as a flat color block inflected by japonisme and set within a single-figure-in-air format associated with Velázquez, they convert a specific garment into a clear sign of martial spectacle.
