Sir Keir Starmer left an audience in stitches after donning a pair of aviator sunglasses in a nod to Emmanuel Macron’s recent style.
The Prime Minister was at the Political Party Live when he was interviewed live, and handed a pair of the now-famous shades.
He greeted the audience, saying: ‘Bonjour.’
Starmer later tagged Macron in a post and captioned it with a Top Gun quote: ‘Talk to me, Goose.’
The PM’s nod to the French President’s recent aviator glasses style was a temporary thing, however – Starmer said he needs his normal glasses to see day-to-day proceedings in the Commons.
France’s president rocked up to the World Economic Forum in Switzerland wearing a pair of Top Gun-style aviator sunglasses last week and went viral.
‘Please pardon the unsightly appearance of my eye. It is, of course, something completely harmless,’ he said at the time.
‘Simply see an unintentional reference to the ‘Eye of the Tiger’ … For those who catch the reference, it is a sign of determination,’ he joked.
For those who didn’t catch the reference, that’s the theme song to the 1982 movie Rocky III, starring Sylvester Stallone.
The stylish accessory – paired with his small quiff and sideburns – lent an unintended air of cool to his dire warning that we’re seeing ‘a shift towards a world without rules’.
Sales of the sunglasses – made and bought at Maison Henry Jullien – have shot up since Macron wore them. 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.’
He was hiding a burst blood vessel in his right eye, something which he described as ‘totally benign’.
Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at [email protected].
For more stories like this, check our news page.
