Now that the cool-guy uniform — skinny jeans, layered Ts, tailored vest and stylish scarf, all in shades of gray and black — has reached every mall in the country, the trendsetters who started it have moved on.

And they're going somewhere that few others can: They're going geek chic.

This means adopting pieces that can be downright nerdy on almost everyone else, but transforming it with confidence and a good eye to make a bow tie the hippest thing around. Think Justin Timberlake — he's the geek-chic role model cited by fashion experts.

His company in the sweater-vest club includes Chuck Bass of "Gossip Girl," Joe Jonas and The Killers. It's like they all discovered the clothes from Don Draper's "Mad Men" 1960s-era closet in a vintage shop in Brooklyn.

They're making a sort of anti-fashion statement, fashionably, says LeAnn Nealz, chief design officer of American Eagle, which is going forward with the look for fall. "It's for the guy who wants to be different, but it's cool-looking. These are guys who might have a beard or put Clark Kent glasses on. ... It's a preppy geek, very Thom Browne-ish, but I think the celebrities interpreted it and made it more accessible."

She adds: "I think it's funny to them. Guys don't have as much to play with in the fashion realm, so that's what can be fun and interesting to them."

Nealz is right to point to designer Browne as an early adopter. He's considered a very influential mens- wear designer — long a champion of the skewered preppy look — but with ideas so far ahead of the curve that the general public needs a few years to get used to them.

Now that the collective eye is used to it, some of his styles don't seem so crazy, but more mainstream stores and designers also have toned them down and added elements of mass appeal, says Tom Julian, author of "The Nordstrom Guide to Men's Style."

And, Julian adds, knowing that all the department stores are now carrying gingham shirts, for example, takes away the scariness for those on the fence (himself included).

The timing is right for a new striking menswear look, he says, which hasn't seen much change since Ed Hardy brought in bold embellishment in the early 2000s. "Is it part of the political shift?" trend analyst Julian wonders. "You don't want to look super jazzed up now. There's some safety and stability in the 'Mad Men' and Kennedy era, and now it's being done with a touch of humor."

Geeks might be best known for their smarts, but some savvy tastemakers recognize the sartorial wisdom in their clothes, notes Brian Boye, fashion director at Men's Health magazine.

"Also," he adds, "for the past few decades, the term 'geek' seems to have undergone a change in meaning. Where it might have once been seen as a negative, geeks are now cool, if still bookish. Examples — The Geek Squad and Geeks on Call are the saviors of our electronics and computers. And many people self-identify as geeks: theater geek, movie geek or history geek, for example."