BODY OF WORK

It is a balmy morning in a tranquil corner of Singapore’s Upper Peirce Reservoir Park, the spot that we have chosen for this photo shoot with model-turned-fitness entrepreneur Liv Lo. Outdoor shoots can be tricky; this one, however, proceeds so smoothly that even our cover girl remarks on it. “That’s one of the fastest cover shoots I’ve ever done,” Liv says after we wrap. “It’s really hard to do what you guys just did.”

We will gladly accept the compliment but let us also point out the obvious reason why the morning went so well: Liv hasn’t been a professional model for a while now, but the decade she spent in that job has clearly etched a kind of muscle memory into her body. It is really hard to do what she did—strike poses that look natural and unstudied;