Hours after Emmanuel Macron's attempt to persuade young French people to get vaccinated on Monday, the buzz around the country focused less on Covid injections and more on mysterious symbols on clothing.
The president had traded in his trademark gray suit, white shirt, and tie, for the more modern look of a short-sleeved black t-shirt for his TikTok Q&A appearance.
Unfortunately, the subsequent flurry of speculation and conspiracy theories suggested that some cared more about the white owl logo on the jersey than Macron's message.
What did the owl logo made up of geometric shapes mean? Was there a subliminal message in the choice of clothing? Was the public relations team at the Elysée relaying a secret message to the perceptive eyes? Was the president part of a secret cabal?
An early theory suggested that it was the logo of the Bohemian Club, a political group created in California in 1872 and named after what Americans saw as the European bohemian movement of the belle époque, a bourgeois counterculture. Today it is an exclusively male club made up of businessmen and politicians from the United States, Europe and Asia. But while the Bohemian Club has an owl logo, it is not the same as the one on the president's shirt and is accompanied by the red letters BC.
Adding to the confusion of the conspiracy, there are two French words translated as "owl" in English: hibou (meaning an owl with tufts of feathered ears) and chouette (an owl without tufts). The hibou is a sign of bad luck or, for the Romans, the messenger of death, representing black magic at worst and a symbol of sadness, loneliness and melancholy at best. La chouette, on the other hand, is a servant of the Greek goddess Athena, a spiritual guide in Celtic culture, and also a French term meaning "super."
Le Figaro said the president's gaze was "sober, direct, relaxed and above all social media friendly," reminding readers of his YouTube challenge with popular French stars Mcfly and Carlito in May.
There has been no official response from the Elysee to questions about the shirt.
However, as capitalism, like conspiracies, abhors a vacuum, a similar T-shirt was being sold online as "the Macron Tik-Tok T-shirt" for €19.99.
