While Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney received a standing ovation in Davos for his speech against Donald Trump, Emmanuel Macron embodied the counter-offensive against the American president, symbolized against his will by his sunglasses.

"Can Macron's sunglasses save the West?", asked the British daily "The Telegraph" on Wednesday, which, like much of the world press, from O Globo in Brazil to La Repubblica in Italy, featured on its front page the photo of the French president wearing aviator sunglasses on Tuesday during his speech in Davos.

In a response to Donald Trump's diplomacy, Emmanuel Macron called for preferring "respect" and "the rule of law" to "brutes" without "wasting time with crazy ideas".

This speech garnered over five million views on a major Democratic support account in the United States, "Democratic Wins Media," which described it as "the most scathing rebuke ever delivered to Donald Trump."

But the success was amplified by the pair of aviator sunglasses with blue polarized lenses, like Tom Cruise in Top Gun, which the tenant of the Elysée has been sporting for a few days due to an eye problem, benign according to the Elysée.

With countless memes on social media parodying Emmanuel Macron as Maverick (rebel) facing Donald Trump, French eyewear maker Henry Jullien (of the Italian group iVision Tech) thanked the president in a statement, explaining that he was overwhelmed by the influx of visitors to his site since Tuesday.

"These glasses were unintentionally a graphic vocabulary very suited to the message he wanted to convey. The form served the content, it gave a Hollywood dimension, cool and virile at the same time, which responded to Trump," explains Philippe Moreau-Chevrolet, professor of communication at Sciences Po.

According to the British newspaper The Telegraph, "testosterone was the main currency in Davos this year, and the French president's aviator glasses put him at the top of the hierarchy."

Paradoxically, Donald Trump amplified the buzz by making fun of "the tough guy" with "his nice sunglasses".

"Donald Trump was outdone in the realm of pop culture and superheroes. It was a risk in terms of communication, but it paid off because the substance of the speech was serious and met an expectation of a response to Trump," according to Mr. Moreau-Chevrolet.

Carney and Macron are "complementary".

Emmanuel Macron appeared wearing his glasses a week ago during his New Year's greetings to the armed forces at an airbase.

He saw it as an "unintentional reference to the eye of the tiger," without specifying whether he was referring to Georges Clemenceau, nicknamed "the Tiger," a figure of French determination during the First World War, or to Rocky, the Italian-American amateur boxer immortalized by actor Sylvester Stallone in "Eye of the Tiger" (Rocky III).

Initially, the head of state was mostly mocked. His aviator glasses were described as "idiot glasses" by Marc Beaugé, the fashion critic for the show Quotidien on TMC.

"Emmanuel Macron constantly overplays the hero, he is very theatrical, so if you give him a prop, this theatrical character can become ridiculous. And he could have passed for a pretentious Frenchman in Davos, like OSS 117, without the speech," acknowledges Philippe Moreau-Chevrolet.

Another speech that made a strong impression in Davos, to the point of being reproduced in full in some newspapers, was that of the Canadian Prime Minister, leader of a country targeted by Donald Trump.

In a lengthy address, Mark Carney warned that "middle powers must act together, because if we are not at the table (of discussions), we are on the menu."

"Mark Carney laid out the doctrine, he theorized the new world order in a way that was considered brilliant. Emmanuel Macron had an immediate impact, he secured the popular, visual part, by selling the message to social networks. These are two complementary discourses," summarizes Philippe Moreau-Chevrolet.