Elegantly lay out pieces arranged to look soft and serene (6)
I believe the answer is:
gentle
'serene' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'elegantly lay out pieces' is the wordplay.
'out' is a deletion indicator.
'pieces' indicates anagramming the letters (the same pieces in a new order).
'elegantly' with 'lay' taken out is 'eegntl'.
'eegntl' is an anagram of 'GENTLE'.
'arranged to look soft and' is the link.
I am not very happy about this link. Some or all of it may be part of another bit of the clue.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for gentle that I've seen before include "Mild and benign" , "Mild; a maggot" , "Kind-natured" , "Kind, not rough" , "Kind - maggot" .)