Pedro Elias Garzon Delvaux has become an internet sensation after an Associated Press photo captured him outside the Louvre museum on the day of the infamous crown jewels heist.

The image showing him in a fedora and three-piece suit sparked heated online speculation that he was a detective involved in the investigation into the audacious robbery of the priceless items.

But in fact, the mysterious man turned out to be a 15-year-old fan of fictional detectives Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot, who lives with his parents and grandfather in Rambouillet, 30 kilometers (19 miles) from Paris.

Sitting down with AP for his only in-person interview since that snap turned him into an international curiosity, the teen says that when he learned that the photo of him had drawn millions of views, he was 'a little surprised'.

The image that made Pedro famous was meant to document a crime scene.

It shows three police officers leaning on a silver car blocking an entrance to the Louvre, hours after thieves carried out the daylight raid on the French crown jewels.

To the right of the image, a lone figure in a fedora and three-piece suit strides past, glancing toward the officers — an uncanny flash of Film Noir in a modern day manhunt.

The internet did the rest.

“Fedora Man”, as posters dubbed him, was cast in turn as an old-school detective, an inside man, a Netflix pitch — or not human at all, with many convinced that he was AI-generated.

Even some relatives and friends of Pedro hesitated, until they spotted his mother in the background.

Only then were they sure: The internet’s favorite fake detective was a real boy, who had wandered, by accident, into a global story.

In reality, Pedro, his mother Félicité Garzon Delvaux, and the grandfather had simply come to visit the Louvre.

Not realizing there had been a heist, they asked officers why the gates were shut.

Seconds later, AP photographer Thibault Camus, documenting the security cordon, caught Pedro midstride.

Four days later, an acquaintance messaged the teenager, asking: "Is that you?"

“She told me there were 5 million views,” Pedro says.

Then his mother called to say he was in The New York Times, a paper he reads frequently, so that amused him.

Cousins in Colombia, friends in Austria, family friends and classmates followed with screenshots and calls.

“People said, ‘You’ve become a star,’” the teenager explains, adding: “It was very funny.”

The look that jolted tens of millions is not a costume whipped up for a museum trip.

Pedro loves to make an effort with his looks.

He appeared for the AP cameras with a fedora hat, Yves Saint Laurent waistcoat borrowed from his father, jacket chosen by his mother, a tie, Tommy Hilfiger trousers and an old Russian watch.

He began dressing this way less than a year ago, inspired by 20th-century history and black-and-white images of suited statesmen and fictional detectives.

But the famous hat is reserved for special occasions: weekends, holidays and museum visits.

The tilt of the fedora in the photo, angled slightly forward, to the side was, Pedro says, an homage to Jean Moulin, the French Resistance hero.

He understands why people projected a whole sleuth character onto him: improbable heist, improbable detective.

He loves Poirot — “very classy” — and likes the idea that an unusual crime calls for someone who looks unusual.

That instinct fits the world he comes from.

His mother Félicité grew up in an 18th-century museum-palace, daughter of a curator and an artist.

Wherever they travel, her children are taken to museums.

For Pedro, culture was part of growing up - and when millions projected stories onto a single frame of him in a fedora beside armed police at the Louvre, mother and son both understood.

The teenager is relaxed about whatever comes next.

If his sudden fame says something about the internet’s urge to turn everything into a story, he is content to be part of it: polite, well-read, softly spoken, raised among books and sculptures.

In a tale of theft and security lapses, the “Fedora Man” is the gentler counterpoint — a teenager who believes art, style and a good mystery belong to everyday life.