When many of us first ventured into the digital playground that was Instagram in 2012, Maria Alia Al-Sadek was ten steps ahead. The “fit pic” was new back then, but Al-Sadek had already perfected the art form. As a Muslim hijabi teenager growing up in Alabama, the model and content creator already felt different. She couldn’t (and, frankly, didn’t want to) buy into the cookie-cutter, Abercrombie and Hollister aesthetic so many of us were obsessing over back then. Al-Sadek figured if she was going to stand out from her peers, she might as well do it in a way that felt authentic and interesting to her. Thus, she began exploring the world of high fashion, devouring magazines like Teen Vogue and Elle that her local Target kept stocked and researching the history of influential designers. She took inspiration from the runways of Alexander Wang, who at the time had an untarnished reputation, and found ways to cinch and layer garments to not only match the silhouettes she saw in the glossies but also meet her own level of preferred modesty.