>>259162That's because many French knives are classy, very iconic, and come with a long and deep story.
It's kind of a French thing to always carry a knife even if you don't really need one and only use it to cut your steak or some string during the day. It's one of those unwritten rules of society, people will consider you differently if you carry a knife, and alter their judgement depending on the knife, bonus points if it has a corkscrew. There are many, many, many, many types of knives in France, several for each region depending on the specific culture and professions.
There's the Douk Douk the anon mentioned above, originally a cheap trade item that aimed Oceanian markets but completely failed, so the remaining stocks were sent to every other colony from Cambodia to the Maghreb, and during the independance war, the Algerians used these knives to assassinate French people, so they ended up being considered to be weapons and were confiscated by the French military who then began to use them aswell. Pulling it out will bring back memories in all former French colonies and current French oversea territories, aswell as the military that fought during the independance war.
There's the Laguiole, the classiest of all, once used by farmers and shepherds, with an upside down cross so you can stick it in the ground and pray even high in the mountains, and a punch to pierce the belly of sick cows so they don't explode in one gigantic fart, and recognized in so many places.
There's the Opinel, known as the fisherman's knife, which they always kept at hand to cut ropes and nets, whose wood would swell at sea and hold the blade open even without the lock, which used to be shittier than it now is, and that was cheap enough to be lost. It was also used by countless famous people, such as Picasso who used it to sculpt clay, and the serial killer Guy Georges who raped and killed seven women with an Opinel N°12.
If you need a knife, it's a good idea to get a French one.
