When the world of fashion photography became oversaturated, one shutterbug let her career go to the dogs.
And business has never been better.
Photographer Chantal Adair, 30, says she had always dreamed of working in fashion, and thought she had found her niche as a trend forecaster after graduating from the New School in 2011 and getting work photographing people on the street.
“I fell in love with . . . talking to strangers. I bought an expensive camera, starting shooting street style, and racked up a large following on Tumblr,” says Adair of her blog NYCStreetFile.com.
Her photos caught the eye of magazines, including Cosmopolitan and Elle, who sent her to London and Paris to stalk It girls and editors for their street styles; she also shot campaigns for brands like Steve Madden and Dolce Vita. But after nearly five years, the Williamsburg resident began to feel unfulfilled; the pay wasn’t great, plus, seemingly everyone had become a street-style snapper overnight.
It took a job rejection to refocus her lens.
In September 2015, when Adair failed to land a magazine gig she was after, she says that instead of wallowing in self-pity, she decided to combine her love of fashion with her love of dogs.
“I decided to dress dogs up in human clothes for Fashion Week for an article I did that ran on Huffington Post. Three days later a woman calls me and says, ‘Hey, can you photograph my dog at Paris fashion week?’ ”
Adair flew with the woman and her Yorkie, Little Lola Sunshine, to Paris, where Adair captured the pooch preening for the camera in front of fashion editors, the Chanel show and the Eiffel Tower.
“The dog can do tricks like walking on its hind legs and handstands. I covered the dog like it was a person,” Adair says.
Little Lola Sunshine’s owner then flew them to Los Angeles and Milan for more shoots, helping the pint-size pet accumulate more than 11,000 Instagram followers.
“It was like a light bulb went off,” says Adair, who now shoots under the handle the Dog Styler.
She began scouting city dog parks for subjects, including mutts at her local run and in Central Park during off-leash hours looking for pristine show dogs, then posted the photos on her Web site.
“I will meet a lot of different animals there and [say to their owners], ‘Hey, I don’t mean to be a creep, but have you ever had your dog photographed?’ ”
During the Rio Olympics this summer, Adair, who remained in the States, shot a series of canines mimicking athletes, including a Chihuahua in dressage duds on a mini horse.
Adair attributes her connection to man’s best friend to her childhood dog, Cocoa.
“When my dad died I was 12, and my mother got my sister and I a poodle named Cocoa. I just think dogs are so easy to talk to, and they sense your emotions,” she says. And because dogs seem to mimic feelings, she says she can keep them Zen by being calm herself.
Under the Dog Styler name, Adair, who charges up to $1,000 for private sessions, has shot lucrative campaigns for Chase Bank and NBC, and is currently shooting look books for Bow & Drape. This week, actor Alan Cumming and his pooch Lala are doing a shoot in her apartment, which is now filled with two racks and eight bins of dog clothes (mostly children’s clothing that she alters herself).
As her business has grown, Adair has increasingly favored elaborate portraits of dogs and owners interacting, including viral sensation Topher Brophy and his doppelgänger dog, Rosenberg. The pair dress in identical clothes, have similar expressions and together channel everything from doctors to preppy bankers to football referees.
“He’s probably my most eccentric client,” she says of Brophy.
Adair, who says she’s been approached about doing a book, loves the feedback she gets from readers on Instagram: “People want an escape. They will say it makes their day. One woman wrote to say she was undergoing her second chemo treatment and the pictures helped her.”
Her work also feeds Adair’s first love as well as her sense of humor.
“It’s been a nice outlet, because I always loved fashion — from ages 16 through 20 I used to model,” she says. “[But I also get to] poke fun at it.”
But don’t expect her to branch out into the cat business anytime soon.
“This guy wanted to do a Christmas card with him dressed as Mary and the cat as Jesus,” she says. “It took three hours for the cat to come down from his perch. They’re just [too] temperamental.”