Epaulettes (French: Épaulettes, Dutch: Epauletten) is the collectors' term of the first series of postage stamps issued by Belgium. The stamps, which depicted King Leopold I and his prominent epaulettes from which the type's name derives, became legally usable on 1 July 1849. They were produced as the result of a series of national reforms to the postal system in Belgium, based on the success of similar British reforms in 1840. Two denominations with the same design were issued simultaneously: a brown 10 centimes and a blue 20 centimes. The stamps allowed postal costs to be pre-paid by the sender, rather than the receiver, and led to a sharp increase in the volume of mail. Although quickly superseded by new types, the Epaulettes proved extremely influential and have since inspired several