The expression “film” has been used liberally over the last month, in all fairness, to describe what happened on October 19 at the Louvre Museum in Paris. That morning, in broad daylight, thieves entered the Apolo Gallery from outside, using an escalator, and, with a radio, stole nine French Crown Jewels (although they dropped a crown along the way). Among the photos released by news agencies on that historic day, one image attracted the attention of millions of people, precisely because of its cinematic aura. Taken by Thibault Camus of the Associated Press, it showed someone standing next to police like something out of a film noir, wearing a trench coat, a slightly tilted Humphrey Bogart-style hat and what appeared to be a lightly trimmed mustache. That a figure with those characteristics was the detective in charge of the investigation had something reparative: no matter how much they had plundered its historical heritage, France would never have been able, would never have known how, to stop being France.
For weeks, social media users have speculated about the identity of the mysterious “hat man,” as he has become popularly known. An investigator so out of time, who we would imagine chasing Al Capone in the years of prohibition but not parading through the streets of Paris in 2025, was too surprising to be real. Or “too perfect”, as some dared to ask if that person existed: the hypothesis that the character had been generated by artificial intelligence grew to such an extent that the photographer had to deny it. This was told by Camus, who denied knowing the protagonist of his snapshot The New York Times who was visually interested in someone walking out of a historic building dressed in old fashion. And no less than the day an old-fashioned robbery had also taken place. Could it, in fact, be the opposite? By a white-collar thief, the privileged criminal mastermind behind the operation? A modern Thomas Crown?
No. In a twist worthy of the unpredictability of the case, this supposed detective with two frustrated marriages due to work addiction, little sleep and several enemies behind bars turned out to be an underage 15-year-old with, quite simply, excellent dress sense. His name is Pedro Elías Garzón Delvaux and that morning he had gone to visit the Louvre with his mother and grandfather. It’s not like he dressed up for the occasion, he dresses like this normally, even to go to high school. Pedro Elías, whose father’s family is half Colombian, speaks lightly on the phone in Spanish during his conversation with ICON. “I really like history and the World War II era,” he explains. It all started during a school carnival. “I dressed up as Jean Moulin, hero of the French Resistance, my idol. And when I was dressed like that, I liked the dress and the way people looked at me. I also like old films, James Bond’s clothes…”
Before chatting with the young man, ICON speaks with his mother, Félicité Douce de La Salle, 50, whose Spanish is more fluent. The reason: between 2014 and 2020 the family resided in Seville due to the work of the father, an environmental economist, at the Joint Research Center. “This elegance of Pedro Elías also comes a little from the Spanish side,” he slips. “When he started dressing like that, I gave people the Seville Fair as a reference, which is amazing, because everyone comes out dressed super well, super elegant and no one thinks it’s strange. I guess there was some inspiration for him, even though he was very small, so he wore a boy’s suit.” He welcomes the boy by dressing as he prefers. “I’d rather my son dress like that than go, I don’t know, dressed as the Joker. It’s nice to see a son in a three-piece suit!” she says amused. The impact of the photo was experienced with humor in the family. Although they were a little overwhelmed by the presence of journalists in the center where the minor studies, the mother is relieved that the reason for so much attention is “something nice, a good story”, unlike so many “bad stories on the Internet”.
They live in Rambouillet, near Paris. It took a while that morning to find out what had happened. “Everything was closed,” recalls Félicité. “We turned around, passed in front of the Pyramid and, on our way out, that’s when Thibault Camus took the photo, we didn’t see it. Immediately afterwards I asked the same policeman, the one in the car in the photo, who was looking towards Pedro Elías, what was happening and he told us it was because of the robbery. We didn’t know, none of us had looked at the phone for three hours.”
His first mustache
One of the reasons that led many not to imagine that Pedro Elías was a child was his impeccable mustache, which gives the sensation of being finely and delicately outlined. After the revelation that he is 15 years old, it is worth considering whether it was a painted mustache, part of the costume, or the result of the student’s painstaking care in grooming his facial hair. “Yes, of course, it’s true,” confirms the boy. His mother, Félicité, chimes in: “He hasn’t cut it yet, it’s his first moustache.”
Before making his Instagram account public and offering his first interview to the agency that immortalized him and made him famous throughout the world, the Associated Press, Pedro Elías admits that he wanted to play with the public’s expectations for several days. “I thought it was really cool and I kind of like this mystery thing. The theories were really fun,” he tells ICON. His intimate surroundings identified him, both by him and by his mother, who appears in the photo right behind him. In the days following the spread of the image, relatives from Colombia, Austria or Switzerland contacted them, surprised. Even in the institute, where his clothing is part of everyday normality and, he assures that he is not used to receiving comments, he says that in recent days many curious people have approached him. “The funny thing is that he had some friends who were wearing a tie last week, because they said: why can’t I wear a tie too?”, adds Félicité. To requests online that a series or film featuring the adventures of the young inspector was produced, he let himself be loved: in the interview with AP he said that he hoped they would call him to film.
Pedro Elías’ grandfather and Felicité’s father is the writer Bruno de La Salle, 82 years old, one of the architects of the rebirth of the story in France. Félicité herself also published short stories. That dimension of his son’s story – you could argue that a detective in a trench coat and hat investigating a jewel theft is “from a movie,” but a boy dressed as a detective in the midst of an assault on the Louvre is “from a story” – is what he finds most inspiring. “(The photo) has captured people’s imagination. They think: Who is he? He’s missing his cigarette! Is he Sherlock Holmes?” When he talks about the performative component in which the young man behaves in the manner of the 1940s, he quotes the famous monologue of As you wish (1599) by Shakespeare: “The world is a great theatre, and all the men and women are mere actors.”
Another question worth asking: How does a teenager nostalgic for World War II clothing build his wardrobe? “He’s 15 years old, he has no money. He has what’s in the house,” says his mother. Despite the disarming common sense of the answer, Pedro Elías claims the family’s good flair for fashion: “There are many things that come from my father and my grandfather. The waistcoat is my father’s, from Yves Saint Laurent. The jacket is Hackett, that’s mine. And I also have in practically all the photos a Cold War watch that comes from Russia. We bought it in India, in Calcutta.” The most exciting detail of her outfit is in the item that caused the most talk, the fedora hat. “It’s a hat from my grandmother, from my mother.” Félicité explains this: “He died last year. In French they say this is a clin d’oeil (wink), it was like a tribute that this photo was taken without us realizing it. At the Louvre my mother studied and was a curator, she loved the museum.”
The whole family is working to help Pedro Elías manage the requests and protect him, with his older sister taking care of the emails, his father doing his part from Pakistan (where he currently works) and deciding together which media to respond to. They are not united with Spain only by the six years they have lived here. “I have many friends, I loved the city and Sevilla Fútbol Club is my favorite team”, he quickly says excitedly, while his mother can be heard laughing in the background. Sevilla fans, with all certainty, would not be in the tanks of many during the days of speculation about the identity of the “man in the hat” of the Louvre. In his posts on Instagram there are no songs by El Arrebato, author of the Sevilla anthem, but there are songs by Frank Sinatra or The Stranglers. Perhaps antediluvian references for someone born in 2010, but good taste, as already demonstrated, does not understand fashion.
