Paris art gallery enforces social distancing among visitors with fashionable extension hats

An art gallery in Paris has sought inspiration in ancient China to help it enforce social distancing, by providing hats with winged extensions for visitors.

The colourful papier-mâché hats are modelled on headgear from the Song dynasty, which ruled China between 960 and 1279, with extensions just long enough to keep wearers the one metre (three feet) apart stipulated in France's COVID-19 regulations.

  Inspired by Song dynasty headwear, artists wear headgear in an art gallery in Paris.

The first Song emperor is said to have ordered his officials to wear winged hats so that they could not gossip without being heard.

"Back in the day, these were worn to prevent public officials from whispering," Dominique Pouzol, who designed the hats for the 59 Rivoli gallery, told a section of the media.

 An artist wears a colourful "deconfinement hat" made of papier mache.

"And so, there was already then this notion of social distancing."

Some of Pouzol's creations carry a political message too, painted in the colours of the rainbow.

 Dominique Pouzol, artist and creator of "deconfinement hats," poses for a photograph.

"The hats are to protect us from COVID-19," Pouzol said.

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