President Emmanuel Macron made a somewhat bold accessory choice at Davos this week after wearing Top-Gun style sunglasses.
But the risk seems to have paid off. Rather than the internet focusing on some of the complex geopolitical crises of our time, people’s attentions have turned to the French president’s bold new look.
And now, sales of the sunglasses – made and bought at Maison Henry Jullien – have shot up. So much so, the website to buy them crashed.
Macron first bought a pair of the Pacific S 01 Double Gold sunglasses, worth €659, for the G20 summit in 2024.
Stefano Fulchir, the president of iVision Tech who owns Henry Julien, told The Guardian: ‘My first reaction can be summed up in three letters: wow! It has not been a typical day. I feel very honoured that the president is wearing our glasses.
‘I said I would be happy to send him a pair but they said no. He did not accept them as a gift, but wanted to purchase them personally.
‘The French president paid a lot of attention to whether the glasses were entirely made in France.’
Only 10 people work at the factory where the sunglasses are produced, and are hand assembled using what iVision calls an ‘ancient technique’.
But sadly there is no distributor in the UK making them unavailable to buy.
Why was Macron wearing sunglasses?
The reason why Macron wore the glasses is, however, less than glamorous.
He was hiding a burst blood vessel in his right eye, something which he described as ‘totally benign’.
But despite the slightly silly look at Davos, there was no doubt how serious he was about a future where ‘international law is trampled underfoot, and where the only law that seems to matter is that of the strongest’.
Though he did not mention Donald Trump by name, Macron attacked ‘imperial ambitions’ that he said were resurfacing and told attendees he prefers ‘respect to bullies’.
Referencing the US President’s recent threats over Greenland, he condemned ‘an endless accumulation of new tariffs that are fundamentally unacceptable – even more so when they are used as leverage against territorial sovereignty’.
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