There's a photo of a young Joe Biden that has been doing the rounds on social media for a while now.

In it the teenage president elect is wearing a burgundy shirt with a killer tan and a megawatt smile and he looks every bit the squeakily clean embodiment of the (pre-Maga) American dream.

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Taken when Biden was a student at the University Of Delaware during the 1960s, the picture has recently been jumped on by some less, ahem, policy-focused election watchers as proof that Biden should win the current election.

“Young Joe Biden could leave me on read at 4.30 and text at 8.47 and I would reply at 8.46,” said @samanthawuensch. “My #MCM is going to Joe Biden because God damn,” said @gabbyfromthebloch.

There's no doubt that the young Biden did look particularly edible back in the day, but for me it's not so much the way the democratic candidate dressed in his youth that sets him apart in the style stakes, rather it's the eye-tinglingly good sunglasses he's been wearing consistently through his seventh decade that make him my personal #ManCrushMonday. 

A long-term devotee of Ray-Ban Aviators (gold with classic black lenses), Biden has not only worn the arch-American style of frame consistently on the campaign trail – making him look something of a careworn Maverick on stage, set against the inevitable stars and stripes – but he wore them throughout his vice presidency to Barack Obama and he will no doubt wear them for the course of his forthcoming presidency, too.

The reason I'm so taken with Biden's sunglasses, I think, is not only because they're implacably cool, no man has ever worn a pair of aviators and looked anything other than sex on a plate.

See a young Tom Cruise or pre-pill-popping Elvis for proof.

Nor is it due to the fact that the style really suits Biden's face (it does – the reverse tear drop shape of an aviator accentuates the angles of his jaw, the rigidity of the frame works well against the softness of his hair and the darker shade of lens complements his fairer complexion). 

No, the real reason I think I'm so taken with Biden's choice of UVA-protective eyewear is because they just make him look so much cooler than the giant orange embarrassment he's been competing against for the past six months. 

Trump, in his bodybag suit and sellotaped tie, is a walking, talking embodiment of the shoddy, ill-considered, ugly beliefs he's been peddling throughout his presidency. 

Biden, on the other hand – with his perfectly cut, single-breasted midnight suits (which always observe the one-button rule and commonly feature the elegant flourish of a pressed white pocket square), his coiffed silver mane and his consistent dedication to a pair of sunglasses that he knows suit him – is poised in the extreme. 

What's more, there's something about aviator frames – worn by Biden or, indeed, anyone else (Trump notwithstanding) – that speaks of mastery and dependability. 

The style, after all, was originally designed by heritage eyewear manufacturer Bausch + Lomb in the 1930s to help pilots keep the sun out of their eyes at all angles while up in the air, before later being adopted as the official frame of the US armed forces. 

For Biden, this utilisation of on-face stylistic heritage helps him exude the air of a man with a hand steady enough to fly a fighter jet, sure, but it also conveys a certain brand of all-American bravura, which has been all but lost from the country's halls of power for the past four years.

It was that other true blue style hero, one Tom Ford, who said, “Dressing well is a form of good manners,” and in the shape of aviator-toting Joe Biden it's a platitude that has never rung truer.