HE IS 82 years old, and his presidency is hardly a glorious memory. It was on his watch that France’s competitive position sharply declined. His popularity sank to 16% during his penultimate year in office. But seven years on, Jacques Chirac has emerged as an improbable icon of retro taste and a figure of public affection.

Bizarre as it seems, images of Mr Chirac in his younger days have become a cult fashion item. T-shirts and tote bags display the former president as the embodiment of insouciant cool: drawing on a cigarette, lounging on a sofa, or leaping nonchalantly over a ticket barrier in the Metro. Captions, in English, include “Chill” or “French touch”. There is a page on Tumblr, a social-media hub, devoted to vintage photos of the career politician’s “suave gangsterism”. Grazia, a fashion magazine, recently called him a French Cary Grant. “Chirac, the hipster” wrote Les InrocKuptibles, a left-leaning style magazine, has made a “sensational comeback in the form of a fashion icon”.

Five years after leaving office, Mr Chirac had already become the most popular political personality on the centre-right. Among heads of state under the Fifth Republic, proclaimed in 1958, he is now a distinguished figure. Voters rate him, along with his mentor Charles de Gaulle, as the president who best embodied optimism, according to a new poll. Three new books out this year decrypt (not always favourably) the long-time political hack, who first entered parliament in 1967 and went on to become mayor of Paris and prime minister before winning the presidency in 1995.

This is puzzling. Mr Chirac’s record in office was, after all, patchy. In his term, unemployment averaged 10%, debt mounted, the French said no to Europe, and the suburban banlieues rioted. Upon leaving office, he was convicted of the misuse of public funds when mayor of Paris in the 1990s. His best claims to a place in history were his stand against the American-led assault on Iraq, and his recognition of the collaborationist French government’s role in deporting Jews.

Perhaps the answer is not politics, but style mixed with nostalgia. Rogue, charmer, father, statesman: Mr Chirac represents the fashions and contradictions of his era, his images forming a sort of Instagram before its time. He blends “a French chic that is both strict and funky”, suggests Les InrocKs. Amid political disillusion and economic uncertainty, there may also be a wistful yearning for simpler times. Antoine Delomez, head of Atelier Amelot, a Paris textile design firm, reports a surge in sales of his Chirac T-shirts; he says this “reflects a nostalgia for a time when people think things were better—whether they were or not.”