Chace Crawford graces VMAN magazine’s first-ever winter issue.

The Gossip Girl hunk is featured in a series of stunning images captured by renowned photographer Mario Testino, who served as the issue’s guest editor.

Says VMAN editor Jesse Ashlock: “Chace embodies the kind of emerging star VMAN strives to celebrate. As Mario Testino’s images show, he’s classic, yet completely of this moment, and he’s ambitious without taking himself too seriously.”

For his part, Chace credits his breakout star status on chance. “I never planned on being an actor. It sort of fell into my lap rather quickly,” he explains, revealing that soon after leaving college to try his hand at acting, he landed a role in the 2006 supernatural thriller The Covenant, then struck gold a few months later when he was cast as Nate Archibald in Gossip Girl.

But his skyrocketing fame has not come without consequences. Regarding the paparazzi and tabloid stories he faces on a daily basis, Chace says: “I let it roll off my back. There’s a lot of speculation with no reality to it, complete fabrications about my private life. It’s just comical.”

And while teenage girls everywhere openly love Gossip Girl, Chace is very aware of the show’s popularity with the adult world. “I’ll be out on the golf course, he says. “And some guy will come up to me, sort of sheepishly, and be like, ‘Hey, my wife really loves the show. And I’m like, “C’mon man, you love the show.’”

[Photo credit: Mario Testino]