What do Messrs Frank Ocean, Keanu Reeves, Jonah Hill, Shia LaBeouf and Jeff Goldblum all have in common? They are darlings of the menswear world, what they wear is untouchable, no matter what it is. Really.

Mr LaBeouf can appear unshowered in old sweatpants and Crocs, for instance, and be widely regaled for it. His unhinged outfits led Highsnobiety to deify him as a “normcore fashion god” and Garage to anoint him “the king of fashion”. He wears Ugg boots, stained logo T-shirts, and sneakers that look as though he’s been at them with a pack of felt tips. How excruciatingly cool, to favour comfort above all else and truly not give a toss about what you wear! (Nothing is more stylish than being flagrantly unfashionable, you know.) He is deeply consistent with his personal style, even if on paper it sounds like he is a sartorial train wreck.

In April, Mr Keanu Reeves was spotted wearing (deep breath): a comfortably tailored grey suit, grey shirt and grey tie, a bright-red trucker hat, a grey and red scarf, and Timberland-esque hiking boots (this is known as mixing “classy with casual” according to the Daily Mail). Mr Reeves might wear a SAINT LAURENT suit on the red carpet and not garner nearly as much attention for his clothes as he will for sipping watermelon juice while wearing a black hoodie and that aforementioned trucker – barefoot, to boot – on set. This is complex stuff.

Another man who puts “layers” into his outfits is Mr Jonah Hill. Mr Hill can wear surprising (and frankly weird) combinations of clothes – everything from tailored trousers and pink hair to tie-dye and baseball vests – and someone will call him “king” on Twitter and garner tens of thousands of favourites and retweets. King of the scumbros it might be, but Mr Hill is certainly fashion royalty of some kind or another, nonetheless.

Mr Frank Ocean, by contrast to the previous “messier” dressers mentioned above, wears largely plain clothes in largely conventional fashion. He wore what was essentially luxury-department-store-security-guard cosplay to the Met Gala last month. And, despite seemingly flouting the event’s “camp” dress code, he had whole think pieces written about why his subversive outfit was in fact roaringly camp precisely because it wasn’t campy. People will twist arguments into all sorts of contortions to praise whatever Mr Frank Ocean wears, because he is beloved.

This is fine, because being beloved means that people always like your clothes (although it’s hard to work out, chicken-and-egg style, how exactly this works). Mr Jeff Goldblum, who is intensely likeable, recently wore Prada shorts that set the internet alight (they were very short) and favours wildly bold shirts, working with his stylist Mr Andrew T Vottero to create looks that people are invariably happy to look at and share. His looks are offensive to the eyes, and he looks great, which is testament to his charming smile. Put a big confident grin on, and you too can wear a zebra-print shirt with ease.

But where does digging into the laundry pile of dirty T-shirts, Prada short shorts, old vests and plastic shoes lead? What is the winning formula that makes these men – a new kind of Fab Five – such unwavering style icons? We’ve deduced that it seems to be a combination of three things…

“In our supremely styled world, where celebrities are dressed by professionals for their walk from the car to the airport terminal, and influencers have turned Instagram into a marketing opportunity, LaBeouf’s dirtbag aesthetic is refreshingly real,” wrote The Cut back in 2017. These men often dress a bit wrong, like, they don’t really have stylists, but just do it all themselves. Of course, some, such as Mr Goldblum, do work with stylists, but Mr Shia LaBeouf doesn’t (stylists are not capable of creating what he does) and Mr Jonah Hill reportedly refuses to work with one because finding the right look for him is a personal process: “If you’re into it, your style is who you are,” Mr Hill told Complex last year. “Don’t let people put you in clothes.” See? Refreshingly real.

It seems as though all of the people on the planet are constantly waiting for Mr Frank Ocean to release new music – humanity is unified in this. He is simultaneously secretive and personal, posting friendly pictures on Instagram before going off-grid for months at a time. Messrs Reeves and LaBeouf, meanwhile, look moody and impenetrable at all times (this is part of their outfit and their brand), and Mr Jonah Hill’s brand of mystery is a little more endearing – he just seems shy and reserved. Mr Goldblum is the exception because he is so forthcoming, but he has previously been called “unknowable” and “bizarre” by a former colleague.

The main rule to take away from all this fashion is that the most stylish thing a person can do is never care too much about what they wear. Nobody gets sick of what Mr Jonah Hill wears because he doesn’t flaunt it. Probably he knows it will garner attention when he leaves the house (pink hair is always a cry for attention), but he doesn’t put it in your face – most of the greatest outfits worn by the likes of Messrs Reeves and Hill were photographed by the paparazzi rather than on fit pics on Instagram. They’re not taking it too seriously; what they wear is often in flagrant opposition to sartorial mores, but this is why it works. Call it a fashion paradox.