PARIS: Top Gun or Terminator? French President Emmanuel Macron’s sporting of aviator shades at Davos this week tickled the press and inspired viral memes online, while prompting a surge in visitors to the eyewear brand’s website.
Macron, speaking at the World Economic Forum on Tuesday, wore sunglasses on stage due to a broken blood vessel that has left him with a bloodshot eye since last week, according to the Elysee’s chief physician.
While the French president stood up for European sovereignty and blasted “unacceptable” threats by his US counterpart Donald Trump to impose tariffs on countries opposed to his plans to seize Greenland, it was Macron’s flashy blue sunglasses that grabbed much of the attention.
“Top Gun or Terminator?,” read a headline in Le Parisien daily, highlighting the viral commentary which ranged from memes photoshopping laser beams shooting from Macron’s eyes to his face on the “Miami Vice” film poster.
Other images on social media showed Macron playing the rebel Maverick from the Top Gun franchise, while facing off to Trump.
“These sunglasses were unintentionally a very fitting visual vocabulary for the message he wanted to convey,” said communications professor Philippe Moreau-Chevrolet at Paris’s Sciences Po university.
“It gave a Hollywood-style dimension — cool and masculine at once — that answered Trump.”
Trump mocked the look, stating: “I watched him yesterday with those beautiful sunglasses. What the hell happened?“
“But I watched him sort of be tough,” Trump added, after Macron said France rejected “bullies.”
The UK’s Telegraph newspaper published the headline “Can Macron’s sunglasses save the West?” in an analysis of the heated and divisive tone taken by largely male world leaders at the summit.
“Testosterone is the primary currency in Davos this year, and the French president’s aviators have placed him at the top of the pecking order,” the Telegraph wrote.
The hype surrounding Macron’s look led to a surge in traffic to the French eyewear maker Henry Jullien’s website, causing it to crash.
“Our eShop website is experiencing an exceptional volume of visits and enquiries” following the “significant visibility” given to the sunglasses by Macron, said a notice on the brand’s website.
It added that it had launched a “temporary page” featuring solely the ‘Pacific’ model worn by Macron, “to ensure stable and secure access for everyone.”