Today, Kelly—wearing a navy blue sweater zipped down just enough for his famously furry chest to peek out of his tank top—is staying at a hotel room in Manhattan, during a busy week where he’s balancing magazine shoots and the awards campaign for Love Story. “They’re keeping me busy,” he says, with a smile.

In a few days, Kelly will go to the Met Gala for the first time, as a guest of the fashion powerhouse Dior, now under the leadership of Jonathan Anderson, a designer who’s no stranger to shifting the zeitgeist. With the expansive theme “Fashion is art,” eyes are sure to be on Anderson—a designer long distinguished for weird and wonderful conceptual clothing—and a star-studded table of luminaries like Love Story co-star Naomi Watts and pop diva Sabrina Carpenter.

It’s a far cry from just a few years ago, when Kelly was just another male model in New York with dreams of crossing over into acting, following the Met Gala red carpet—as most of us civilians do—through his phone. “It’s the to-do of the year, in terms of costuming and haute couture, outside of the fashion shows,” he says. “I never thought I would be going to these things and now I’m like, on a first class ticket.”

(The actor is also co-hosting the evening’s GQ Party, a responsibility that he plans to take seriously. “Oh, we’re going to cut a rug on the dance floor,” he says.)

Kelly’s stylist Warren Alfie Baker has been in touch with the Dior team about the custom design, sharing the actor’s own ideas with the brand. “Jonathan whipped something up and sent it over,” Kelly says. “I was like, Yeah. Super cool.”

With a burgundy velvet tail coat and long drapey trousers, the actor cheekily describes the outfit as “Clark Gable meets Dracula.”