Higher education, Sprouse says, is “frowned upon within the industry” because it “halts momentum.” But that was exactly what he was looking for. “I went to school and sort of reconciled who I was and tried to find my own little path through the world outside of acting,” he explains. He enrolled at N.Y.U., where he studied archaeology, focusing on what he describes as “early-stone-tool tech.” Over beers, he discusses the subject breathlessly, though he notes that his undergrad exposure was hardly glamorous. “You're kind of just an unpaid intern who's washing sediment and emptying the latrine.” Sprouse took up photography in those New York years, too, and he was plenty happy—working in a Brooklyn lab after graduation, preparing to go to grad school. It's easy to imagine Sprouse's life had he followed that path: He'd started booking gigs shooting fashion photos, and his brother now brews mead in Brooklyn. But despite his best efforts, his previous, more famous life intervened. His manager asked him to give acting one more shot: Riverdale, a project Sprouse liked enough to audition for. And so Cole Sprouse became famous again—this time on his terms.

Sweater, $850, by Marni / Watch, $9,300, by Glashütte / Bracelet, $160, by A.P.C. Sweater, $850, by Marni / Pants, by Salvatore Ferragamo / Bracelet, $160, by A.P.C. / Necklace, $2,700, by David Yurman

There's the character, to start. Riverdale's update of Jughead Jones from a burger-loving asexual beatnik to a brooding writer in love with Betty Cooper is a big reason the hit works as well as it does. Sprouse is the perfect dreamboat for his moment—analytical, self-aware, and willing to play his own hotness for camp. When we meet, he's dressed casually, in a jean jacket with a shearling collar over a white T-shirt, but he sports his classic uniform the way he does almost everything else: with intention and a half dose of irony. Sprouse says his personal style was inspired first by his father, “very much influenced by a kind of working-class, little bit more archaic definition of masculinity.”

Watch:

Cole Sprouse Goes Undercover on Reddit, Twitter and YouTube

It's fitting that a guy who adores and unpacks '50s style would end up on a show full of '50s tropes turned inside out. But it's more than the clothes that make him right for the role. Sprouse, after all, is a guy with ideas about the “archaic definitions of masculinity” and one with sympathy for Jughead. “Here's this kid writing about all the people he's close to,” Sprouse says of his and showrunner Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa's approach to the character. “I want him to feel sort of like a hipster and a little bit pretentious and self-serving. He's got some social anxiety.”

Suit jacket, $16,000, and shirt, $990, by Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello / Pants, (his own), by Levi's / Belt, by Brunello Cucinelli

Speaking of: While Sprouse's first bout with stardom came before Instagram, his second is, by necessity, fueled by it. And in that way, Sprouse is gamely playing the part of the famous actor, shooting selfies to his 22 million followers. But he's also keeping things weird, tweeting that he's “just a daddy long legs looking for mommy wide thighs” and running a second Instagram account dedicated to snapping fans in the act of trying to sneak photos of him. The kid who gave up a career to study ancient stone tools is still an eager student, but now his field is something closer to what it's like to be young and famous a second time. He'll have plenty of material: He's back on the big screen this spring, in the young-adult romance Five Feet Apart.