Mick Jagger’s French Revolutionary Costume in the ‘Sympathy for the Devil’ Video – What It Was and Why

In the 1968 promotional film for “Sympathy for the Devil” — the one that later reappeared in The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus — Mick Jagger wears a black striped shirt, a red sash, and a red Phrygian cap. That cap, a soft conical hat with a forward-bending tip, was the most iconic headgear of the French Revolution, worn by sans-culottes and Jacobins. It’s the exact costume of a radical revolutionary, not a king or aristocrat.

The choice fit the song’s theme. “Sympathy for the Devil” runs through historical atrocities where the devil claims responsibility, from Christ’s crucifixion to the Russian Revolution. The Reign of Terror — Robespierre, the guillotine, mass executions — was a perfect 18th‑century example of mob violence and ideological bloodshed. Jagger dressed as a revolutionary to place the devil inside that chaos, suggesting that even noble causes can become monstrous. The band also wore other