Dress like President Macron to save energy this winter. The French government’s latest recommendation for enduring the country’s looming energy crisis is a delicious marriage of fashion and statism, with a hint of haughtiness thrown in for good measure. It is, in other words, typically French.

The suggestion came last week from the French finance minister, Bruno Le Maire, who encouraged civil servants to forego their usual shirts and ties in exchange for woolen turtlenecks underneath their suit jackets. Cue an appearance by the energy minister, Agnès Pannier-Runacher, in an orange turtleneck topped with a blazer and a puffer jacket.

In a video address to les citoyens on Monday, Mr. Macron appeared donning a black turtleneck beneath his royal blue suit jacket. “We are ready for this winter,” the French president said. The sartorial push is part of the government’s plan to reduce energy consumption as the country faces energy shortages amid the war in Ukraine.

Thermostats in government buildings are to be set to no more than 19 degrees Celsius (66 degrees Fahrenheit). Residential buildings are encouraged to maintain a similar indoor temperature, while France’s supermarkets are to linger at a brisk 17 degrees Celsius (62 degrees Fahrenheit). 

Since September 23, the lights of the Eiffel Tower have been going out earlier – at 11:45 p.m. instead of the usual 1:00 a.m. The Louvre’s iconic pyramid and the façade of the Château de Versailles now also join the darkness much too soon. The darkened monuments are metaphors for the drudgery that likely awaits the country when winter eventually settles in.

“Don’t have enough heating? Let them wear cashmere”, came the retort from the French opposition leader, Marine Le Pen –  a parody of Marie-Antoinette’s infamous injunction, “Let them eat cake.” That declaration is believed to have been uttered by the Queen of France on learning that the French peasantry lacked for bread, even though it likely never happened.

Mr. Le Maire’s sartorial guidance has indeed been met with criticism right and left. A former advisor to President Hollande, Gaspard Gantzer, labeled the notion “grotesque and paternalistic.” The French economist Thomas Porcher told France Inter Radio, “I don’t expect an economy minister for the sixth or seventh economy in the world to tell me to put a polo neck on. That’s for my mother or grandmother to do.” 

Yet in a manner typical of the French, the ostensible outrage has been met with sartorial theorizing. Why a turtleneck? Surely any warmer garment would do. What might it symbolize? Why does Mr. Macron wear so many, and so often? 

The turtleneck recalls France of the 1970s and 1980s, a time when French public intellectuals were akin to international superstars. It became an iconic symbol of the French philosopher Michel Foucault and was later donned by the artists, writers, and intellectuals such as would often be found rendezvous-ing at Café de Flore in Paris’ Saint Germain quarter.

The turtleneck became a symbol of counterculture and of an apparent erudite sophistication – at times imagined and at other times real. Mr. Macron once longed to belong to this tradition. He aspired to become a novelist, an ambition for which the French presidency was intended as but a back-up.

In “Revolution,” his 2016 presidential campaign tract and his only work published to date, Monsieur Macron confesses, “I cannot really explain this trajectory. I see only the result, which, fundamentally, is always a work in progress, of a long-standing undertaking and an all-embracing taste for freedom.”

The aspiring-novelist-turned-president studied philosophy at Sciences Po and worked as an archivist for French philosopher Paul Ricoeur. Might, then, his affinity for turtlenecks reflect his self-conception – that of a frustrated intellectual now tasked with keeping his country’s lights on?

Or, perhaps, his desire to inject into contemporary France a similar radicalism that captured it decades ago? Such are the queries that Mr. Le Maire’s energy-saving sartorial suggestion have prompted.

It might, then, also be a good moment to ask why French energy policy has led to this pitiful state. Why a country rich in nuclear power must now embark on a program of “energy sobriety,” announced by the government today – and why Mr. Macron, like many of his European peers, waited until the eleventh hour to act? 

It is among the oddities of French politics that it at once frustrates and delights. Though the French might yet endure a winter of discontent, they also might, through their crisis, herald the fashion statement of the 2022 winter season. Vive le turtleneck.