The Harry Styles Lesson: From Teen Idol To Global Star

On the latest cover of the American edition of

, the first ever by a solo man in the magazine's nearly 130 years,

projects a distinctly androgynous image.

In the photo, taken by Tyler Mitchell, the former One Direction frontman is wearing a black blazer and a sheer white long-waisted dress, designed by Alessandro Michelle for Gucci, which reveals his tattoos on his chest.

His toupee takes on the volume of an old rocker and his fingers are adorned with rings worthy of a Borgia.

It has, in short, a unique and unusual style,

Anglo-Saxon magazines specializing in lifestyle and men's fashion -especially

, which has him as a muse- have pointed out that Styles has accumulated at the age of 26 the merits to be considered the new David Beckham, that is, a heterosexual male shamelessly to expand the codes of what, ethically and aesthetically, should be a man of today.

In the same

report

, Styles also appears

that give the impression that, instead of patent leather shoes, he is wearing a deconstructed version of a Roman legionnaire's sandal.

There is one nuance to note, however:

but a neat refinement: facial hair as an ornament and not as an Amazonian jungle, perfume and give yourself cream for dark circles, get sophisticated in the small details, such as boat shoes without socks or a custom t-shirt.

What about Styles, on the other hand, proposes something else:

.

This concept, call it ambiguous, androgynous or

in its most recent sense, is not new, but as old, at least in pop music, as glam or even

But for him it has been an unbeatable opportunity, since it has allowed him to develop a new identity as an icon in that delicate moment - it came from the break in 2016 of One Direction, the most popular boy band of the previous decade - in which to develop a solo career was like taking a leap into the void.

There are countless cases of teenage idols who get lost in the adult world and are unable to advance in their careers without crashing.

There's

one worn out by drugs and the other turned into an internet stoner hooligan.

For other teen celebrities, the road has been bumpy to say the least:

still have careers, but paying the high cost of their controversies overshadowing almost everything.

The transition from the youth audience to the global market implies a difficult transition that must be done carefully: the cases of Robbie Williams, Justin Timberlake or Kylie Minogue are, in fact, the exception to the rule that every child idol usually becomes a broken toy .

Harry Styles is one of those exceptions.

None of his peers in One Direction has managed to keep up:

the first to

the band, has released two albums and went flat on the second - he went from number one in the UK to number 77;

there is more talk of his relationship with Gigi Hadid than of his musical future - and neither

have made much noise with their solo albums.

In the case of Styles, his luck has been different: his first solo work,

(2017), sold more than a million copies and was number one in the Anglo-Saxon world and even in Spain;

the next,

(2019), repeated numbers in the United States, United Kingdom and Australia.

At the moment, he only accumulates hits, although with a conservative style, a kind of pseudo psychedelic folk-pop between

What is little surprising in the musical, however, Styles has compensated with intelligent decisions in other areas, one taken in 2017 - his first acting job under Christopher Nolan in

;

He preferred a lesser but prestigious role to rushing into a leading role in an opportunistic film - and another in 2018, which was his signing as the image of the Gucci firm.

In his last two years in One Direction, Harry Styles already began to suggest that androgynous inclination that he has finished exploding as a model:

Styles' harmony with Gucci is total, to the point of being the center of the new Overture collection, designed by

and which was presented at the end of November via YouTube in a series of seven shorts directed by Gus van Sant and with a script by Paul B. Preciado, starring the Italian performance artist

another pop star also installed in the discourse of gender fluidity.

Ultimately, Styles' opportunity to put his teenage past behind him and play in the first division of the majors has been to twist Baudelaire's words, and defend that you have to be absolutely postmodern.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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