After many magazine covers, Zayn has finally made it to the editorial summit: the September issue.

Zayn covers the September issue of Elle U.K. along with Kristen Stewart, Hari Nef, and Amandla Stenberg. While Zayn’s life has drastically changed in the past year, a particularly notable shift has been his personal style.

“Since leaving One Direction I’ve been given the freedom to be able to wear whatever I want and that’s made it more interesting,” he said. “More creative. I can say I want to wear metal arms and it’ll happen.”

And that he did — with supermodel girlfriend Gigi Hadid, who Zayn also gushes about to the mag.

“She’s super intelligent, I think that’s why it works so well,” he explained. “And we do the same type of job so we get that with each other.”

It’s beautiful when two hot people are able to find each other and fall in love. Bless their hearts.