Sydney Sweeney Stars in Debut American Eagle Denim Campaign: Exclusive First Look

Sydney Sweeney is all about comfort.

She is quick to admit that she holds that in high regard. In fact, she “wouldn’t be caught dead” wearing jeans on a plane, she tells PEOPLE. Give her sweatpants, or give her death.

Unless those jeans are from American Eagle.

“I am a sweats girl,” she confesses. “But yesterday I wore a pair of American Eagle jeans on a plane, and I was like, ‘Oh, this is great. They’re so comfy.'”

So when she got the call that she was going to be the face of the brand’s newest denim campaign, it was like her whole world lit up.

“I was freaking out because I was like, ‘This is perfect,’ and I was so excited,” she says, admitting that she’s been a lifelong, organic fan of the brand’s jeans. “When they were like, ‘We want it to be a denim campaign,’ I was through the roof. I was like, ‘This is it. This is Syd. I will be able to bring this to life. You have no idea.'”

In the new fall American Eagle campaign — aptly called “Sydney Sweeney Has Great Jeans” — the Euphoria actress, 27, dresses in a couple pieces of fall-centric denim, pulled together by her stylist Molly Dickson. One look sees her in a modern Canadian tuxedo with bold blue jeans and a matching jacket, but rather than simply wearing it as intended, she models it in a few different ways, including worn open with nothing under it and backward.

Another look includes super-baggy light-wash jeans with a white tee and then a similar pair but distressed, worn with a white tank. Each piece of denim feels relaxed and comfortable — exactly how Sweeney likes it.

“They’re the comfiest jeans I’ve ever worn. I don’t know why anyone wears anything else,” she says.

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The campaign feels raw in its simplicity. The actress got to have her dog, Sully, with her, and the vibe was very chill to match how the brand wants you to feel when you’re wearing the denim. Sweeney says she felt like the most “stripped-back” version of herself in this campaign, even though the photos still have some sex appeal with the hints of skin.

As part of the new fall campaign, American Eagle is launching The Sydney Jean, a limited-edition version of the Dreamy Drape jean. The denim will have a butterfly motif on the back pocket as a symbol of domestic violence awareness, something Sweeney feels passionately about. To support the cause, 100% of the purchase price of The Sydney Jean will be donated to the Crisis Text Line, a nonprofit that offers free, 24/7 mental health support to those in need.

With Sweeney stepping into the brand’s fall campaign, she opens up about some of her own fall memories with PEOPLE, including years gone by and back to school time when she was younger. As plenty of people head out shopping to stock their closets for the school year, Sweeney reveals that that’s not what she did when she was a teenager.

“My back-to-school shopping wasn’t about clothing,” she says. “It was about the school supplies. If I still fit my clothes, I was wearing the same clothes for a few years. It wasn’t, ‘Oh, you have a new school year, you’re wearing new clothes.’ It was not that in my life. It was school supplies, But I loved being organized. I loved having different colored notebooks and binders for different subjects, and I’d get it all organized before I started school. So I really loved that.”

Just because she wasn’t out perusing the local mall before school started, though, it didn’t mean that she wasn’t carefully thinking about what she was wearing on the first day of school each year. However, she jokes that her first-day ‘fits are going to “disappoint” people because trying to put an outfit together that early in the morning as a teenager was just not in the cards for her.

“I was not that girl,” she says with a laugh. “I was like, ‘I’m just wanting to wake up at the last minute that I possibly can and I’m just going to throw on a sweatshirt and some jeans, and that’s it.’ I was not the girl that was planning extravagant outfits before school.”

She thinks about it for a second and laughs again.

“Oh man, I feel so bad. But it was so early in the morning. Who has time for that?”

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These days, Sweeney still gravitates toward that comfy ‘fit of jeans and a T-shirt or sweatshirt — she just amps it up with some flair.

“It makes me feel the most comfortable and the truest version of myself,” she says. “But I add a little flavor to it. I’ll add cute belts or cute shoes and cute sunglasses or baseball caps and purses that kind of change up the outfit. So it’s still the same look, but switch up the accessories.”

Most of the time when she’s wearing denim, it’s going to be American Eagle, because she really does love them that much. Like she keeps saying, they’re so Syd.

The fall collection is available at American Eagle now.