About: Smiley Phryge (pronounced, with French style, as "Free-juh") represents what's known as a Phrygian cap, based on similar caps worn by 18th-century French revolutionaries, who saw it as a symbol of freedom. […] "When the French and British wanted to choose a cap of liberty from antiquity, they got it wrong," he [Charles Brian Rose] says. "They chose the Phrygian cap, which signified Middle East status, rather than the pileus, which signified liberty—and so the Phrygian cap came to be interpreted as a symbol of liberty."       Sponge   NotDistinct   Permalink