The primary appeal of Heartstopper, the cult-hit queer teen dramedy that premiered on Netflix in 2022, is that it’s something of a bright light in a weary world. Imagine if someone were to apply a thick layer of empathy balm over the thorniness of adolescence, and that’s sort of what watching Heartstopper is like. It’s a swoon of a TV show.

There’s something to that, even, in seeing how the show’s young stars—among them Kit Connor, Joe Locke, and William Gao, all of whom attended the 2023 Vogue World event in London last night—approach red-carpet dressing, as exemplars of how Gen Z is moving the needle on the ol’ penguin-suit routine that dominated most of the last century. Getting dressed to go out should be fun, which seems to be the primary mode these Heartstopper fellas are operating in here.

For his part, Connor, who plays earnest rugby star Nick Nelson on the series, wore a glittering blue polo shirt and matching black trousers by Loewe. (Connor’s a friend of the brand, and he’s attended a few of designer Jonathan Anderson’s shows across several fashion weeks.) Locke, who portrays soft-spoken protagonist Charlie Spring, wore a Valentino shorts-suit set in the brand’s signature neon fuschia—which has been a celeb-favorite menswear swerve these last few years, as seen on Hollywood guy Sebastian Stan or Zoomer musician Conan Gray—offset with burgundy loafers and socks. And then there’s Will Gao, known as brooding Tao Xu on the show, in a crafty lace-trimmed Bode suit over a breezy wide-collared shirt that, according to our British GQ brethren, placed him squarely into “full Haunted Victorian Schoolchild mode.” Each of the three is rocking their own distinct shade of heartthrob, be it glitzy, sporty, colorful, or moody—which, in the long, stodgy arc of menswear—is already progress enough.

Originally Appeared on GQ

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