Emmanuel Macron channels inner Anna Wintour by wearing $771 sunglasses indoors
French President Emmanuel Macron’s aviators stole the show and fluffed some feathers at the Davos summit in Switzerland, but the internet loved it.
If anyone can pull off wearing sunglasses indoors, it’s Anna Wintour, the mighty fashion editor herself. But if there’s anyone else, the French president may be a close contender.
That seemed to be the verdict online, where some social media users praised Macron’s pair of blue, reflective “lunettes,” which he donned at the World Economic Forum this week.
The president’s striking look drew plenty of attention, especially during his speech at the Swiss resort, where he rebuked US President Donald Trump over his Greenland takeover plans and threats to impose tariffs on European countries that opposed it.
However, it appears Macron was not deliberately trying to project a tough-guy image, but instead wore the shades for medical reasons. According to his office, the president wore sunglasses because of a burst blood vessel in his eye.
And yet, that didn’t explain the particular choice of aviators, which many online naturally compared to Tom Cruise in his 1986 film Top Gun.
A number of memes contrasted Macron’s image with Trump’s, including one AI-generated video showing the US president aboard Air Force One, while the French leader flips him off from the cockpit of a fighter jet.
“Europe is done playing nice,” declared some social media accounts.
A version of the popular meme “Soyboy vs Yes Chad,” depicting Trump as the former and Macron as the latter, was also widely shared online, including by the French European Affairs Minister Benjamin Haddad.
One user on X played into a “2016 again” trend, arguing that Macron “transcended twink death and turned into a chad” over the past decade.
Last week, Macron appeared at a military event in France with a red eye, later covering it with a similar pair of shades as the ones he’s wearing in Davos. He apologized to the troops for the "unsightly appearance of my eye” but stressed it was nothing serious.
Macron’s critics were not convinced by the health explanation and dismissed his look as “ludicrous.” Some even suggested, without evidence, that Macron was hiding a black eye after his wife had “hit him again.”
Trump himself mocked the French president’s “beautiful sunglasses” in his own speech in Davos.
Macron wore a pair of sunglasses from the brand Henry Jullien, which is part of the Italian group iVision Tech. The president wore the Pacific S 01 model, which is sold for €659 ($771) on its website.
The group’s chief executive told Reuters that the site crashed after Macron’s look went viral. The company said it sent Macron the sunglasses as a gift, but the president insisted on paying for them and made sure they were made in France.
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