"Where did the jacket come from?" Marine Tondelier declined to answer the pressing question from internet users and Le Monde: "It amuses me to see people searching," she said. But according to Google Lens, an image-recognition program powered by artificial intelligence, the jacket is a model from The Kooples, a French brand that defines itself as "accessible high-end." Despite scoring a low 22/100 score on Clear Fashion, an app that independently investigates the environmental and social impact of retailers, the jacket is 100% wool and made in Portugal. Regarding its price tag of €395, Tondelier said, "It's the most expensive garment in my wardrobe. If only I'd known it would be on sale so soon..."

Tondelier has "always worn light green jackets," because she finds the party's forest green hue "sad." On the ground, she often wears a denim model, practical for fieldwork but unsuited to national stakes, she joked on the French TV program Quotidien, where she evoked her "zadist jackets" (ZAD refers to zone à défendre, a usually rural area occupied by activists opposed to a development project). When she spoke to M Le magazine du Monde, she recalled "a second-hand Sessùn model" with nostalgia, worn so much since her election as head of the French Green party in 2022 that "the lining tore." On June 13, 2024, when the left-wing Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP) alliance announced an agreement on their policy platform, an urgent replacement had to be found. A "trusted friend" bought her three models. The blazer was adopted as soon as it was put on. "I realized its impact on June 14, on the set of TF1's 1 pm news program, when I saw the group photo we'd just taken. Amidst the dark jackets, you could only see me."

In June 2024, an anonymous internet user not affiliated with the Greens launched the @VesteTondelier ("JacketTondelier") account on X. There, the jacket speaks in the first person, provides real-time commentary on Tondelier's speeches and, in one instance, suggested that far-right editorialist Eugénie Bastié, who appeared in a green blazer on CNews to criticize the NFP, wear "a brown shirt" instead – the color attributed to the party. With 15,000 followers, the account illustrates the efforts of young left-wing supporters to counteract the rise of the far right (Jordan Bardella has 1.9 million followers on TikTok) since the earthquake of the European elections. Their weapons: edits, memes and compiled punchlines of their champions. In this battle for influence, the jacket has enabled the Greens to pull out all the stops in a game hitherto dominated by the radical-left La France Insoumise (LFI). The green jacket now stands alongside other icons of the political wardrobe, such as former Socialist president François Mitterrand's felt hat, right-wing leader Laurent Wauquiez's red parka and former conservative president Jacques Chirac's high socks.

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