Wading through Styles’ background info is exhausting, since he was spanked by fame in the social media era where every goddam blink of a kohl-rimmed eye has been documented from six angles. (And yes, he does sometimes wear guyliner.)

Deep breath: born in Redditch, Worcestershire, to parents Des and Anne, who divorced when he was seven. Grew up in Holmes Chapel in Cheshire with his sister Gemma, mum and stepdad Robin Twist. Rode horses at a nearby stable for free (“I was a bad rider, but I was a rider”). Stopped riding, ​“got into different stuff”. Formed a band, White Eskimo, with schoolmates. Aged 16, tried out for the 2010 run of The X Factorwith a stirring but average rendition of Stevie Wonder’s Isn’t She Lovely. Cut from the show and put into a boy band with four others, Louis Tomlinson, Liam Payne, Niall Horan and Zayn Malik, and called One Direction. Became internationally famous, toured the globe. Zayn quit to go solo. Toured some more. Dated but maybe didn’t date Caroline Flack, Rita Ora and Taylor Swift – whom he reportedly dumped in the British Virgin Islands. (This relationship, if nothing else, yielded an iconic, candid shot of Swift looking dejected, being motored back to shore on the back of a boat called the Flying Ray.) One Direction discussed disbanding in 2014, actually dissolved in 2015. They remain friendly, and Styles officially went solo in 2016.

It’s been two years since his eponymous debut and lead single, Sign of the Times, shocked the world and Elton John with its swaggering, soft rock sound. ​“It came out of left field and I loved it,” John says.

After 89 arena-packed shows across five continents grossed him, the label, whomever, over $61 million, Styles had all but disappeared. He has emerged only intermittently for public-facing events – a Gucci afterparty performance here, a Met Gala co-chairing there. He relocated from Los Angeles back to London, selling his Hollywood Hills house for $6 million and shipping his Jaguar E‑type across the Atlantic so he could take joyrides on the M25.

“I’m not over LA,” he insists when I ask about the move. ​“My relationship with LA changed a lot. What I wanted from LA changed.”

A great escape, he would agree, is sometimes necessary. He was in Tokyo for most of January, having nearly finished his album. ​“I needed time to get out of that album frame-of-mind of: ​‘Is it finished? Where am I at? What’s happening?’ I really needed that time away from everyone. I was kind of just in Tokyo by myself.” His sabbatical mostly involved reading Haruki Murakami’s The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, singing Nirvana at karaoke, writing alone in his hotel room, listening to music and eavesdropping on strangers in alien conversation. ​“It was just a positive time for my head and I think that impacted the album in a big way.”

During this break he watched a lot of films, read a lot of books. Sometimes he texts these recommendations to his pal Michele at Gucci. He told Michele to watch the Ali Macgraw film, Love Story. ​“We text what friends text about. He is the same [as me] in terms of he lives in his own world and he does his own thing. I love dressing up and he loves dressing up.”

Because he loves dressing up, Michele chose Styles to be the face of three Gucci Tailoring campaigns and of its new genderless fragrance, Mémoire d’une Odeur.

“The moment I met him, I immediately understood there was something strong around him,” Michele tells me. ​“I realised he was much more than a young singer. He was a young man, dressed in a thoughtful way, with uncombed hair and a beautiful voice. I thought he gathered within himself the feminine and the masculine.”

Fashion, for Styles, is a playground. Something he doesn’t take too seriously. A couple of years ago Harry Lambert, his stylist since 2015, acquired for him a pair of pink metallic Saint Laurent boots that he has never been photographed wearing. They are exceedingly rare – few pairs exist. Styles wears them ​“to get milk”. They are, in his words, ​“super-fun”. He’s not sure, but he has, ballpark, 50 pairs of shoes, as well as full closets in at least three postcodes. He settles on an outfit fairly quickly, maybe changes his T‑shirt once before heading out, but mostly knows what he likes.