Inaya Malik
Styling · 2025

Soft Tailoring

A twelve-page editorial on tailoring as a love language.

Soft Tailoring
Client
Editorial — Polished Quarterly Issue 04
Role
Stylist · Co-Direction
Location
Chicago
Year
2025
Overview

Styled and co-directed the cover story for Polished Quarterly's tailoring issue. Twelve pages, eight looks, one continuous narrative on softness as the new authority in suiting.

The challenge

Pull from twenty-three brands across two cities in ten days, build a story coherent enough to read as a single voice, and shoot it in a single 14-hour day.

Approach

  1. 01

    Wrote the editorial brief as a short fiction piece — every look a scene from the same character's day.

  2. 02

    Negotiated pulls from emerging Asian-American designers alongside heritage houses, balancing the book's commercial and editorial halves.

  3. 03

    Built a tight on-set system: three fittings rolling in parallel kept the shoot on schedule.

03 — Outcomes

What it moved.

12 (incl. cover)

Pages secured

23

Designers featured

100%

Brand pulls landed

14h, on schedule

Shoot day length

Press & Recognition

  • Polished Quarterly — Issue 04 cover
  • Business of Fashion — emerging stylists
Gallery

Selected frames.

Floral jacket styling
Cinematic still