When the 15-year-old Pedro Elias Garzon Delvax realized a companion photo of the day of the jewelry report that held millions of views, did not hesitate online and did not force himself.
As opposed to the opposite. A fan of Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot who lives with his parents and grandparents in Rambouillet, 30km (19 miles) from Paris, the Myseros rubbed off on the Mystery.
As theories swirled about the heavily dressed stranger in the “Fedora Man” Detective, Insider, Ai FED – he decided to keep quiet and watch.
“I don’t want to say it’s me,” he said. “In this picture there is mystery, so you have to let it last.”
Pedro is a bright teenager who gets lost, by accident, in a global story.
The image that made him famous was meant to document a crime scene. Three police officers lean on a silver car blocking an entrance to the Louvre, hours after thugs attacked the crown with hammers on the day of the attack on the French press. On the right, a lone figure in a three-piece ensemble walks past – a film noir flash of a modern-day manhunt.
The Internet is all that’s left. “The Fedora Man”, as users call him, is dismissed as an old school, an insider, a netflix person – or not a person. Many are convinced that he has become an AI.
Pedro understood why. “In the photo, I’m dressed more in the 1940s, and we’re in 2025,” he said. “There is a difference.”
Even some relatives and friends were skeptical – until they saw his mother in the background. Only if they’re sure: the Internet’s favorite fake detective is a real boy.
The real story is simple. Pedro, his mother and grandfather went to the Louvre.
“We wanted to go to the Louvre but it was closed,” he said. “We didn’t know there was a heist.”
They asked the officials why the gates were closed. Seconds later, AP Photographer Thibault Camus, documenting the Security Cordon, caught Pedro midstride.
“When the picture was taken, I don’t know,” said Pedro. “I was just passing by.”
Four days ago, an acquaintance who pretended: is it you?
“He told me there were 5 million views,” he said. “I was a little surprised.”
Then his mother called to say he was in The New York Times. “It’s not sunny,” he said. Cousins in Colombia, friends in Austria, family friends and classmates followed with screenshots and calls.
“People said, ‘Become a star,'” he said. “It amazes me that with just one photo you can go viral in a few days.”
The look that set millions is not a costume delivered for a trip to the museum. Pedro started wearing this style less than a year ago, inspired by the history of the 20th century and images of black and white details.
“I want to be chic,” she said. “I’m going to school.”
And the hat? No, that’s its own ritual. Fedora is reserved for weekends, vacations and museum visits.
He understands why people expect a completely destroyed character in him: unstoppable heist, unstoppable detective. He likes poirot – “elegant” – and likes the idea that an unusual crime calls for an unusual person. “When something unusual happens, you can’t imagine a normal detective,” he said. “You imagine someone different.”
That nature is in harmony with the world he came from. His mother, Félicité Garzon Delvaux, grew up in an 18th-century museum, daughter of a curator and an artist – and always his son to show his son.
“The arts and museums are living spaces,” he said. “Life without art is not life.”
For Pedro, art and imagination are part of everyday life. So when the millions of expected stories in a frame in a Fedora next to the armed police of the Louvre, he knows the power of an image and let me breathe.
He kept quiet for several days, then switched his instagram from private to public.
“People should try to find out who I am,” he said. “Then the reporters came, and I told them my age. They were very surprised.”
He enjoys whatever comes next. “I’m waiting for people to meet me for films,” he says, grinning. “That’s very funny.”