Young Gen Z men are trading in their sweatsuits for quarter zips — pullover sweaters that zip from mid-chest to neck.

The trend started with a viral TikTok video from Jason Gyamfi and Richard Minor, who talked about upping their style game for job interviews.

“We don’t do Nike Tech,” they said in the video, which has tens of millions of views. “We don’t do coffee. It’s straight quarter zips and matchas around here.”

It takes me back to my middle school days at St. Ignatius School in Baltimore — where we had to wear a professional clothes and sometimes wore quarter zips that our parents brought us to match. But not by choice.

In the early 2000s, St. Ignatius was one of the first schools of its kind in Baltimore. Its mission was powerful and bold: Take young men from impoverished Baltimore neighborhoods and develop them intellectually, physically and spiritually through a rigorous and structured academic experience.

For us, that meant an all-boys school, extended learning days, school all year round, homework every night. And a mandatory uniform. However, our uniform was not the same as the one the kids in our neighborhood wore to their zone schools; ours was much stricter. They wore black bottoms and white shirts. For us, everyday a shirt, tie, belt, and dress shoes were expected, and breaking that dress code was not an option.

And we didn’t like it. We felt forced to wear it.

On our way home from school, the fellas and I scrambled in the back of a nearby store with our rollaway book bags stuffed with textbooks. We’d switch out dress shoes for Jordans and replace sweaters, and definitely our ties, with hoodies. And we’d transform our fits there, not just because we patronized the store so much that the owners allowed us to, but because we thought we had to before we got on the subway. We didn’t want to be targets.

Plus, to us private-school boys, Mondawmin Mall, where the store was, was the epicenter for the teens and tweens universe. There were girls there. Girls who went to Frederick Douglass High School. Girls who went to Carver Vocational Technical High School and wore name earrings. Pretty girls and girls that popped gum loudly. The majority were too old for us, but we still had to look cool for them.

To top that, our mission didn’t end at Mondawmin; we still had to walk through our drug-ridden neighborhoods past hustlers, dealers and even sometimes kids who had those “preppy private school boys” jokes. At the time in Baltimore, that preppy look would have gotten you stoned. So, at 12, in our little worlds, we improvised as best as we could.

I laugh about it now because culture is in such a different place than it was in 2002. And now that I think about it, I’m certain no one was paying attention to us or our uniform.

Now, ironically, the look that made us targets now makes today’s kids trendsetters. Even if the quarter zip trend doesn’t last, I’m rooting for it because it’s showing young people that it’s okay to be different.

What makes this trend interesting is that it represents a “complicated” generation adopting a new mindset of professionalism and a more mature look.

But possibly, what makes this trend more astonishing is that culture is actually backing it. Young men who are normally stereotyped negatively because of hoodies and ski masks are now being seen as more polished as they take on this work-appropriate, but also street-wearable look.

As an educator who has worked with Gen Z, I can’t say enough how proud I am of this movement and its potential. Not just because my closet is turning into Goodfellow polo sweaters and quarter zips from Target, but because it takes courage to go against the norm.

Over the last couple of weeks, I haven’t gone undercover to unlock the psychology of this Gen Z trend like I did with their obsession for hoodies. I simply continue to sit back and smile like a proud uncle. Because long before quarter zips, Oxford shirts and ties underneath were a thing, I was wearing them. And getting clowned for it.