‘French things’: Who is the fedora-hat detective investigating Louvre museum heist? Internet’s latest obsession

The Louvre, the world’s most-visited museum, was targeted by thieves on Sunday, October 19, when they stole historic jewellery valued at 88 million euros ($102 million) in broad daylight.The heist was described as a “terrible failure” for the museum by Louvre Director Laurence des Cars, who has subsequently offered to resign.

The theft has exposed security vulnerabilities and prompted scrutiny of both the museum and the govt’s commitment to protecting art and history. Meanwhile, the Internet has reacted by turning the incident into a series of memes, rapidly meme-ifying the heist.

Is a fedora-wearing French detective really on the case of the Louvre heist? Well social media thinks so.An image, distributed by The Associated Press to news media outlets, showed three policemen leaning against a silver car parked in the courtyard of the Louvre Museum in Paris with a dapper man standing jauntily on the right side of the photo.The officers, the AP caption said, were there to block the entrance to the museum. But the man, dressed in a fedora, waistcoat, and tie has sparked speculation that he’s a detective tracking the jewelry theft that rocked the world’s most-visited museum.In reality, the man appears to be a stylish passerby with no official connection to the investigation. “I don’t know him,” Thibault Camus, the AP photographer who shot the image, said in an interview on Thursday. “I don’t know if he is French. Maybe a tourist? Maybe he is English.”It was the man’s outfit that caught the attention of Camus and made him take the photos of that man— who was someone dressed in an old-fashioned way walking out of a historic building. “Old-fashioned like a museum can be,” Camus added.Nonetheless, memes and videos about the “Louvre heist aesthetic” have exploded online: TikTok videos mimicking the thieves’ movements have racked up tens of millions of views, and social media users are playfully imagining detectives straight out of 1940s film noir.Another post by social media influencer Ian Miles Cheong, viewed over 90,000 times, read, “The man in the fedora, who looks like he came out of a detective film noir from the 1940s is an actual French police detective who’s investigating the theft of the Crown Jewels at the Louvre. Pure aesthetic.”Melissa Chen commented on X, “To solve it, we need an unshaven, overweight, washed-out detective who’s in the middle of divorce. A functioning alcoholic who the rest of the department hates.Never gonna crack it with a detective who wears an actual fedora unironically.” Social media user @ChloreaFan, in a post viewed 100,000 times, stated, “They will bring the grizzled vet you speak of onto the case. They will be forced to work together, even though the fancy cop will want to play it by the rules and the grizzled vet wants to bend the rules.They will both learn a little about themselves in the process.” Contributor alliebunn_, in a TikTok post viewed 5.2 million times, captioned, “Yes I’m romanticizing this, it’s the most exciting news we’ve got in a WHILE!” Another TikTok user, thewafflehome, with a post viewed over 270,000 times, overlaid the text: “A crazy heist that occurred right around Halloween and no one is suspecting Raymond Holt and his detective squad at the 99th precinct in Brooklyn????”

Investigators pursuing the gang responsible for the Louvre jewel heist have discovered DNA traces on a helmet and gloves and obtained new footage of the thieves fleeing the museum, the Paris prosecutor’s office confirmed to NBC News on Thursday. The prosecutor’s office stated that it remains unclear whether the DNA belongs to the suspects who stole eight pieces of jewellery from the world’s most-visited museum during a daylight robbery on Sunday that lasted just four minutes. Officials reported that the group used power tools to shatter display cases, threatened security guards, and escaped on scooters, leaving behind a trail of clues, including Empress Eugénie’s crown, which was dropped during their getaway.