Leaving her home in Le Touquet to cast her ballot in the French presidential elections on Sunday morning, Brigitte Macron wore a sleek Louis Vuitton navy coat, with a face-flattering flash of silver leather in the raised biker-styled collar. She was still wearing the coat that evening, by which time she was the country’s first lady elect, raising hands in triumph on stage with her husband, Emmanuel Macron.

Ours is a visual culture. When we get dressed, we take a position. Brigitte Macron, who has a longstanding personal interest in fashion and has been a Paris front row regular for years, knows this very well indeed; that coat was a deliberate choice, and an interesting one for several reasons. First, the biker-style collar made it a subtly rebellious look where, traditionally, political wives choose for election day dutiful, church-on-Sunday coats or dull, senior-management-meeting ensembles. Second, Macron has worn this coat many times before, including – with leather trousers, that time – to Paris fashion week in March last year, so the choice emphasises Macron’s own taste (this is from her wardrobe, not by order of an image consultant) and industry connections. Third, the coat is by Louis Vuitton, France’s biggest luxury brand, and reinforces her husband’s message of a progressive administration comfortable with big business.

Brigitte Macron’s style has a relaxed allure. Photograph: Yoan Valat/EPA

Macron will be the first French president’s wife to take a formal role in the Élysée Palace. The former teacher will have an office and a staff, and a remit that is expected to include education reform and the needs of disadvantaged children. (She will, however, forego a salary, mindful no doubt of what it did for Penelope Fillon.) So I expect you want to know why we are talking about her coat. Well, if we accept that we as a society take an interest in what we wear – and a global fashion industry, which at the end of 2016 was valued at $2.4tn, suggests we do – then it is nonsensical that Oscar dresses and Met Gala outfits worn by twenty-something starlets should be pored over, but the style choices of women whose lives touch our own in more substantial ways considered off-limits.

This election campaign has rebooted the optics of politics and fashion by bringing a little French sophistication to the table. The cliche about the French and English attitudes to wine – that the French can have a glass with dinner, while the English can’t be trusted not to drink two bottles and be sick in the gutter - is echoed in fashion. The French take for granted that a woman can like clothes, spend money on clothes, know about clothes, while simultaneously being a fully functioning grownup; in British culture, one expensive pair of leather trousers can be a stain upon one’s character, as Theresa May discovered earlier this year. (When Macron wore leather leggings, they were commented on, but the French national press did not feel the need to invoke a national crisis.)

That Louis Vuitton coat again at Paris fashion week, plus leather leggings. Photograph: Rindoff/Le Segretain/Getty Images

This healthy degree of flex in the French relationship with fashion is what gives Macron’s style a relaxed allure that is in stark contrast with her across-the-Atlantic counterpart Melania Trump, a woman whose hermetically sealed chic thrums tightly with tension. Trump’s aesthetic itself borrows heavily from Jackie Kennedy, but also from that of Carla Bruni in her Élysée years. Bruni’s wardrobe was an Americanised version of French polish. The insouciant touches – scruffy hair, gappy teeth – that make Parisian style magnetic were Photoshopped out. Bruni’s suits were by Christian Dior, but in their immaculate, apple-pie perfection they owed something to Walt Disney. Brigitte Macron, on the other hand, has a penchant for leather and above-the-knee skirts, which reflects a distinctly Parisian way of dressing. French fashion-show goers noticeably become edgier rather than cosier in their style after 40. The iconic stylist and ex-Vogue editor Carine Roitfeld, 62, has in the past two decades made the leather pencil skirt her signature. Longtime model and style icon Inès de la Fressange, who in her 30s wore mostly Chanel tweed, is now at 59 more often dressed in a simple black leather jacket.

Michelle Obama made motherhood a central part of her image, while Carla Bruni’s style owed something to Walt Disney. Photograph: Pool/Getty Images

Too much has been made of the Macron age gap, which is, as has been almost as oft-repeated, exactly the same as that of the Trumps. But what is relevant to Brigitte Macron’s image is that by coming into the public eye as a 64-year-old grandmother, she is defined neither by her role as a mother nor by being childless. The preceding graduating class of modern first ladies – Michelle Obama and Samantha Cameron, more recently joined by Sophie Trudeau – made motherhood a central part of their image. Being what the advertising industry insists on calling a Busy Mum is a great leveller, a point of connection that allows women living privileged existences of staffed households and private jets to make themselves relatable to the electorate. (Another way to do this is through fashion, as Sam Cam with her Zara shoes and Michelle Obama with her J Crew cardigans knew very well.) Being a Busy Mum has become a key relatable-aspirational position for women in the public eye. Beyond politics, the Duchess of Cambridge and Victoria Beckham have seized upon it, and the identity can be seen played out on screen in Big Little Lies. It has undeniable charm, but it is a little one-note, and as the distasteful Angela Leadsom episode of last summer underlined, it has a sharp and excluding edge when applied to politics. If Macron can bring an alternative paradigm into play, as a woman who is defined neither by status as a mother nor by the fact of being childless, that will surely constitute progress.