“Tisn’t beauty, so to speak, nor good talk necessarily. It’s just It. Some women’ll stay in a man’s memory if they once walk down a street,” Rudyard Kipling wrote in the 1904 short story Mrs Bathurst. This is one of the earliest mentions of what would later be defined as the It Girl, a concept that then gained popularity with the silent film adaptation of the 1927 novel It by Elinor Glyn (“With It, you win all men if you are a woman and all women if you are a man. It can be a quality of the mind as well as a physical attraction”), before disseminating into culture en masse. We know who the It Girl is: she’s Edie Sedgwick, Alexa Chung, Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, Chlöe Sevigny, Paris Hilton or Julia Fox, to name a few. For their most recent yesteryear issue, The Cut named 150 women in New York alone whose notoriety is synonymous with the title, and how they shaped the art, culture and nightlife scenes they were endlessly papped in over the past century. But what about the It Boy?
Earlier this summer, The New York Times referred to designer Eli Russell Linnetz as “fashion’s reluctant It Boy”. Others recently bestowed with the title by the media include the obvious and the unorthodox: Harry Styles, Lil Nas X, V and Jimin of BTS, Choi Yeunjen of TXT, Stray Kids’ Hyunjin, Timothée Chalamet, Luka Sabbat, and Pedro Pascal. The Instagram and Twitter accounts @itboytrends has been documenting the style of those it considers It Boys du jour since 2017: Troye Sivan, Penn Badgeley, Jacob Elordi, Bad Bunny, Manu Rios and more. Alongside them are pictures of the male fash pack in their chic fits at Fashion Weeks or the guys with the most stylish outfits at festivals. “Nowadays, the It Boy is an influencer and, more than that, is not afraid to experiment,” Tauan Gomes, the 28-year-old behind the account says. “They’re someone who you look at and think, ‘Wow, they’re interesting. I need to find this person on Instagram.’”
There’s no doubt that many of the men listed above hold that distinguishable, highly-covetable style, the ineffable charm and charisma that makes heads turn when they “walk down the street”, as Rudyard once described. These male stars’ cultural impact and style will be picked apart and referenced for years to come, but they lack one, arguably just as important aspect of It status: they’re all far too employed.
“An It Girl is an amateur in all things,” The Cut’s Matthew Schneier states. Those with It don’t really have one job so much as a finger in many industries – or, on the flipside, no job at all. It’s why Chlöe Sevigny, who first garnered attention as a model and student starring in Sonic Youth music videos, could no longer be considered an It Girl due to her recognition as a bonafide indie movie darling, even if she is still a style icon. Matthew adds that the It Girl is “famous for being out, famous for being young, famous for being fun, famous for being famous.”
If part of the It pull is that you don’t really know what they do or why, beyond their charm and style, you’re weirdly obsessed with their every move, then those recently crowned It Boys aren’t It Boys at all. The pop stars, K-pop stars and actors lack that very important je ne sais quois. What’s more, their homoerotic fashion campaigns and sexy styles are taking over our social media feeds largely because they’re hot and we’re horny and the algorithm knows it. (As Tauan of @itboytrends notes, much of his content is “for the gay community”.)
By this definition, the It Boys of today should be men like the backup dancer-turned-male model-turned-Elvis actor Alton Mason, or skateboarder, streetwear brand favourite and Gossip Girl reboot star Evan Mock. It should be Fai Khadra, Kendall Jenner’s alleged ex dabbles in various different fields. Or 2015 “Model of the Year” Jordan Barrett, who last year was named by Vogue as one of the “faces of the LGBTQ+ revolution”. Or footballer turned TikTok star turned Gen Z heartthrob Noah Beck. Or Paul Hameline, an artist, fashion muse and one time movie star in Gaspár Noe’s Lux Æterna (2019). They might be involved in the occasional film or TV project and promise to release music, like Manu Rios did, “at some point in the future”, though you’re much more likely to see them sat front row at a Milan fashion show.
But there doesn’t seem to a unified consensus quite like with It Girls. Perhaps part of the problem is that the It Boy, a fairly new label that has come about in the social media era, is not comparable to the storied It Girl. The It Girl has been defined over decades, and has shape-shifted alongside the rapidly changing position of women over that time. She’s not so much an authority of the culture, but someone who has used the gaze placed upon her to craft a cultural relevance, a respect and a desirability. There’s a certain level of cultural graft involved that socialite men have never had to do. “How would we understand the 50s if not for Marilyn Monroe? Who holds a mirror to the counterculture ethos of 90s youth culture like Chloë Sevigny? Whether it’s Naomi Campbell, Paris Hilton, or Edie Sedgwick, a true It Girl serves as a prism for the world in which she lives; she both reflects the culture around her and helps change it, single handedly,” Rayne Fisher-Quann wrote in i-D earlier this year lamenting how the internet killed the It Girl.
Does a modern male counterpart to that even exist? Which man in the social media era is both mysterious and defining the culture of the moment? The internet has also both watered down and democratised the meaning of It, and not just for the It Boys. Women such as Jennie from Blackpink and Zendaya have also recently been crowned with the label, despite being known first and foremost for their projects over their public appearances and their style. “I feel like I’m more defined than what It Girl has traditionally meant,” Hari Nef said to The Cut, after being crowned with the title. “It’s an ineffable quality, and I’m really transparent about being good at two things: I’m an actress, and I’m a writer.”
In some ways, the internet has taken the label away from the jobless few either born or married into wealth. But in turn, its democratisation has also taken away the very thing that makes the It phenomenon so enticing in the first place: their innate ability to define the moment without doing much besides simply showing up. Only time will tell if one of the male multi-hyphenates will be a lens through which we read the 2020s, but if the internet killed the It Girl, it simultaneously stopped the true It Boy from ever really existing.