This costume was one of a series worn by Chris Martin, the singer with the British band Coldplay, during the period of their 2008 album Viva La Vida and 2008-10 world tours. The album's theme was of revolution with the cover art featuring the painting La Liberté Guidant le Peuple (Liberty Leading the People) by Eugéne Delacroix. To resonate with this idea, the band worked in association with Sara Jowett and Stella McCartney to design a 'uniform' that they would wear for the entirety of the album's promotional and touring period. The look was inspired by the Delacroix painting, representing the sans-culottes of the 1830 French Revolution while using bits of recycled fabric to compose a colourful military style, akin to the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's album cover costumes.
The Viva la Vida tour started in London with a free concert at Brixton Academy on June 16, 2008, and took in 74 cities across North America, Asia, Europe and Australasia, ending in Monterrey, South America on March 11, 2010, having sold more than 1.5 million tickets. With such a long touring period, Chris Martin had several of these uniform costumes made; this particular one was worn at Coldplay's Wembley Stadium gig on September 18, 2009.