Styles is big on friendship groups and considers his former and legendarily hysteria-inducing boy band, One Direction, to have been one of them. Just being on my own the whole time, I would have been miserable.” I honestly just like being around my friends,” he adds. It’s such a good example of living in the moment. The experience, says Styles, “has been a really good lesson in what makes me happy now. I like to make soups, and there was a big array of movies we went all over the board,” from Goodfellas to Clueless. “If you were Monday, you would choose the movie, dinner, and the activity for that day. They “would put names in a hat and plan the week out,” Styles explains. After a few days on his own, however, he moved in with a pod of three friends (and subsequently with two band members, Mitch Rowland and Sarah Jones). At the onset of lockdown, Styles found himself in his second home, in the canyons of Los Angeles. It seems that he has had a productive year. I feel like I’m able to enjoy the things that are happening right in front of me, even if it’s food or it’s coffee or it’s being with a friend-or a swim in a really cold pond!” Styles also feels that his meditation practices have helped him through the tumult of 2020: “Meditation just brings a stillness that has been really beneficial, I think, for my mental health.” “It has changed my life,” he avers, “but it’s so subtle. He practices Pilates (“I’ve got very tight hamstrings-trying to get those open”) and meditates twice a day.

Styles has been on a six-day juice cleanse in readiness for Vogue’s photographer Tyler Mitchell. A handful of intrepid fellow patrons in various states of undress are blissfully unaware of the 26-year-old supernova in their midst, although I must admit I’m finding it rather difficult to take my eyes off him, try as I might. That sweatshirt and the Columbia Records tracksuit bottoms are removed in the quaint wooden open-air changing room, with its Swallows and Amazons vibe.

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