Harry Styles Has a Mustache Now. And Yes, It's Glorious

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At the peak of the #menswear craze in the early 2010s, sprezzatura—an obscure Italian term first coined by Baldassare Castiglione in The Book of the Courtier—was the word on every blogger's lips. Castiglione defined the term as a "certain nonchalance" essential to avoiding affectation, an attribute he perceived as anathema to any courtier well-versed in the ways of the 16th-century Italian court.

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Ironically, as is often pointed out, the sprezzatura embraced by the blogosphere and the peak-lapeled peacocks of Pitti Uomo represented a bastardized take on Castiglione's original term, championing a much narrower conception of the word that emphasized personal style above all else, and not a particularly nonchalant version of it at that. (If you're not sure what I'm talking about I highly recommend revisiting the extensive repository of street style images from that era available online and having a nice reminisce. They really hit different these days. Ah, to be young and Boglioli-ed!)

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Well, much like all your soft-shouldered tailoring, it might finally be time to take the term out of that storage unit you rent in Hoboken and ready it for everyday use again because over the weekend photos of Harry Styles in Italy turned up online and if there's any man ready-made to resuscitate the term it's the Godfather of Gucci, the Pearl Papi, the Bad Boy of Bootcuts himself.

While traveling through Modena, Styles stopped by Villa Manodori, the Massimo Bottura-helmed olive oil mecca, in an outfit that excellently embodies the effortless, ah, style, Castiglione first referred to. In a cheerful striped tee, perfectly cut denim, scuffed sneakers (artfully mismatched laces and all), and a standout scuzzy 'stache, Styles looks like the second coming of sprezzatura we didn't know we needed. Posing amicably with a bottle of olive oil, the singer (perhaps expectedly) looks exactly how you should when you've been on lockdown in Italy—or anywhere, really—for who-knows-how-many months.

In other words, he looks like he's ready to singlehandedly rescue an old-school Italian term from the deepest depths of internet obscurity. And I'm here for it.

This story originally appeared on Esquire.com. Minor edits have been made by the Esquiremag.ph editors.

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About The Author
Avidan Grossman
Avidan Grossman is the Style eCommerce Editor at Esquire, covering men’s fashion, shoes, grooming, and accessories. He spends way too much time deciding what to wear. Needless to say, his parents still have no idea what he does.
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