street fashion’s finest
model + stylist + Makeup: Michelle nguyen
creative directed and shot by maia feruzi
sunday october 5th 2025 5pm
📍ping tom park & chinatown, chicago, il
shot on canon eos rebel t3i 18-24mm, 70-300mm
concept
Michelle reached out to me from my facebook AD for a fall mini’s photoshoot. New to Chicago from Arkansas, she wanted to check out the Chicago creative scene, revamp her instagram and refresh her modeling with some cute digitals. After discussing the vibes she was looking for, we settled on a street fashion look in Chinatown. Somewhere urban but with pockets of greenery we could use to contrast her fit. I created a moodboard for her styling inspo that focused on layers with pops of color, and she 100% understood the assignment. Seeing the outfit she put together got my creative juices flowing and ramped up my excitement for the shoot.
She also brought headphones and her purse to use as props throughout. Fashion photography is not my go to style so I found this shoot to be an interesting practice in what to look for creatively. Where do I want my viewers eye to go, when the whole fit is the focus? Do we do close ups of details, wide shots for storytelling, or keep it simple and do bust up portrait style? I tried to mix the three together, while choosing interesting backgrounds in Chinatown that I thought would compliment her look. Michelle’s one request was that she wanted to work with golden hour. That made me a little wary at first. I love golden hour I do, but the glow is sometimes too strong and gives my models an oversaturated, burnt orange look that I find hard to deal with in editing. We got to Chinatown in the middle of golden hour and rather than run, I leaned heavily into it. I played with shadows from trees, having the light highlight only part of her body and face, and peek-a-boo sun spots in the background instead of directly on her. I think what we wound up with was glowy and gorgeous, while still keeping some of that “hard”, “tough girl fashionista vibes” that was our original theme.
