The world leaders and company executives meeting in Davos this week were meant to be discussing the most complex and alarming geopolitical crisis most could remember.
Instead, all eyes were on Emmanuel Macron.
The French president’s appearance in reflective Top Gun-style aviator sunglasses was the image that launched a thousand pithy jokes, memes and questions. Had he been injured while sparring in the boxing ring? Had he injured himself while working out in the gym? Did he simply, some wondered, want to avoid looking Donald Trump in the eye?
Few could have blamed Macron for channelling Tom Cruise in a mission impossible to neutralise the US president’s plan to take over Greenland and impose 200% trade tariffs on French wine and champagne. Some, like the communication specialist Philippe Moreau Chevrolet, saw the president’s decision to wear the French-made eyewear as symbolic in the context of France’s strained relations with the US.
The real reason was more prosaic: Macron was stylishly disguising a subconjunctival haemorrhage, a burst blood vessel in his right eye – a condition he described as “totally benign”.
But even he was not immune to cliches. Addressing French troops at a military event last week, Macron had described the problem as “l’oeil du tigre” (the eye of the tiger). The comment referenced the 1982 song by the rock band Survivor used in the boxing film Rocky III starring Sylvester Stallone. For those too young to get the reference, it was a “mark of determination”, he added.
The sunglasses prompted rumours that the French president may have been injured in the boxing ring. Photograph: Soazig de la Moissonnière/Présidence de la République
For the artisan workers at Maison Henry Jullien in the département of Jura in eastern France, where glasses have been made for more than 100 years, it was publicity impossible to buy.
Stefano Fulchir, the president of iVision Tech, the Italian company that owns Henry Jullien, said the first he knew of the presidential endorsement was when French opticians rang him to say: “The president’s wearing our glasses!” When news spread, the company website crashed for most of the day.
“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,” he said.
Macron’s office had contacted the company in 2024 to buy a pair of €659 Pacific S 01 Double Gold sunglasses as a diplomatic gift during the G20 summit and a second pair for himself, he said.
“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.”
Henry Jullien’s Pacific sunglasses, which were worn by Macron in Switzerland. Photograph: Henry Jullien
iVision acquired Henry Jullien, founded in 1921, in 2023. Fulchir said the team of 10 staff at the factory at Lons-le-Saunier, north of Geneva, produced about 1,000 of the sunglasses worn by Macron a year.
The glasses are hand assembled and made using what iVision calls an “ancient technique”, where gold is bonded rather than plated to the base metal, making it harder wearing. The blue-tinted UV lenses are produced by Dalloz, another Jura-based company.
Fulchir said the glasses were available at opticians around the world and even in war-ravaged Ukraine, but the company had yet to find a UK distributor.
“This is not ordinary eyewear; it’s a luxury product that won’t break after two years and that can be used for a long time. It’s an investment, like jewellery, like a watch,” he said.
Jimmy Mohamed, a medical doctor and media commentator, told the French broadcaster RTL that he believed Macron had worn the sunglasses for “aesthetic reasons”. “The glasses protect his image, but not really his eye,” Mohamed said.
