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Jill Mahoney

This article was published more than 10 years ago. Some information may no longer be current.

Swiss model Julia Saner runs up the stairs near the Eiffel tower as she leaves a fashion show for an other during the Haute Couture fashion week in Paris January 26, 2011. Saner, an 18-year-old top model, was in Paris during the Haute Couture Spring-Summer 2011 fashion collections.© Philippe Wojazer / Reuters/Reuters

Known around the world for their effortless style, Parisian women can now officially wear trousers without the slightest risk of arrest.

An archaic law requiring women in the French capital to seek permission from the police to wear les pantalons has finally been repealed more than two centuries after it was originally passed.

The 1800 decree was later amended twice, allowing women to don pants if they were holding "the handlebars of a bicycle or the reins of a horse."

The rule was intended to limit women's access to certain jobs and to prevent them from challenging men's role in society.

Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, France's minister of women's rights, overturned the law last week.

"This ordinance is incompatible with the principles of equality between women and men which are enshrined in the Constitution and France's European commitments," she wrote.

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