Zanita Whittington shoots a Puma

It’s a trend that is, increasingly, bound to get up the noses of some professional photographers: self-taught snappers with blogs nabbing lucrative commercial contracts that might have gone elsewhere. Notable examples include Scott ‘The Sartorialist’ Schuman shooting for Burberry, among others and Jak & Jil’s Tommy Ton shooting for Sergio Rossi and Lane Crawford. In Australia, joining a list that already includes Hayley Hughes’ Windsor Smith advertorial and Matt Jordan’s campaign for Orri Henrisson, comes model-turned-photoblogger Zanita Whittington’s new e-lookbook for Puma Australia. Starring Tania Pozzebom, it features product that is exclusive to Puma’s concept stores in Sydney and Melbourne, including Alexander McQueen for Puma, Puma by Hussein Chalayan, Rudolf Dassler Shufabrik and Mihara Yasuhiro. Here is a first look. The Puma gig follows twelve months after Whittington was tapped as a face of US sportswear giant American Apparel, the news of which unleashed a mini storm of controversy over AA’s claim that it only ever uses non professional models.

images: zanita whittington for puma/supplied exclusively to frockwriter by puma

Zanita Whittington tastes life in the fat lane

zanita whittington's twitpic

Since frockwriter revealed in late April that Sydney model and blogger Zanita Whittington was LA-bound to star in an advertising campaign for American Apparel, she has garnered quite a bit of press. A raft of outlets, starting with Jezebel and New York Magazine, noted that Whittington's win was at odds with American Apparel's claim that the company only uses its employees, and not genetically-blessed professional models, in its campaigns. So was Whittington trying to get a little closer to regular folk today when she used an odious new iPhone app called Fatbooth to don a digital fat suit and Tweet a rather more rotund version of herself? “Better lay off the chocolates” she quipped in a Twitpic caption. (Here is our recent, non-enhanced shot of Whittington, below, for comparison). Anyone launching a modelizer app that turns the plus-sized into size zeros?

Zanita Whittington books American Apparel

You know Zanita Whittington. The leggy blonde Priscillas model has been blogging for almost two years. Frockwriter first met her at last year's Rosemount Sydney Fashion Festival. In the interim, Whittington has scored some advertising from US athleisure brand American Apparel and been busy blogging her own tests of other models, alongside her regular auto-portraits. And that's not all. At today's Garance Doré event at Westfield Bondi Junction, Whittington told frockwriter she is about to head to LA to shoot an American Apparel campaign. Whittington won't just be modelling, the campaign will, she reports, focus on her activities as a blogger. A great get for Whittington and one that follows hot on the heels of the Hudson Jeans campaign shoot that was just live blogged by Bryanboy. Given the history of American Apparel however, let's just hope founder/CEO Dov Charney isn't too hands-on with this particular campaign. Charney is noted for his sexually provocative advertising and has himself been the subject of several sexual harassment suits.