Diesel's New 'It Girl': Wheelchair-Bound Fashion Blogger Jillian Mercado

Diesel

Meet the new face of fashion: Jillian Mercado, a 26-year-old fashion blogger turned model who gets around in a wheelchair, due to a condition called spastic muscular dystrophy. She's the newest star of Diesel's spring/summer 2014 ad campaign - oh, and awesomely, her wheelchair is in her ad, too.

In the ad, a platinum blonde Mercado is sitting in her chair, wearing a denim dress with a slit on the skirt, posing next to visual artist James Astronaut. "I was super nervous for this shoot because I'm not used to being in front of the camera," Mercado tells Yahoo Shine. "It was weird being a model for the day, but really cool. I've always wanted to be in the fashion world, despite the obvious obstacles in my way, but I try to have a strong and positive attitude."

Mercado, who runs the blog Manufactored 1987 where she posts her musings on art and fashion, is no newbie on the style scene. She's been a regular at New York Fashion Week for years where she volunteers, and in 2012, she began covering events for fashion photographer Patrick McMullan's PMc Magazine for which she edits the "Who Am I" Q&A column. She got tapped for the Diesel campaign after she spotted a Facebook casting call for the ad. "I met Jillian years ago when she worked at an online magazine and I've been mesmerized by her ever since," Nicola Formichetti, Diesel fashion director and Lady Gaga's ex-stylist, tells Yahoo Shine. "The thing about Jillian is that she doesn't let people worry about her. She came to the shoot and everyone showered her with attention and she said, 'I'm fine, I'm fine! Let's do this.' By the end of the day, everyone was in tears."

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Diesel has a history of stirring the pot with its edgy campaigns. In August, the company took to microblogging site Tumblr to seek "real-looking" people to pose as models. Examples included a plus-size female graffiti artist with pink hair, a 65-year-old former fashion editor, and a female former Olympic swimmer who made a career out of posing as a male model. And in September, Diesel released a controversial poster ad as part of its "Diesel Reboot" campaign, which sought to "baptize a new era of energy, bravery, and bold iconography at Diesel." In it, a tattooed model wearing a burka (and nothing else) posed with one hand on her hip. The ad's tagline read, "I am not what I appear to be." The company's use of the unconventional image stirred debate with many calling the ad, "deeply disrespectful."

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Call Diesel the anti-Abercrombie. Its experimental ads can border on controversial, but in a world where the clothing retailer Abercrombie & Fitch doesn't offer sizes above Large and former Lululemon founder announced that the company's yoga pants are exclusive to one body type, isn't Mercado's ad refreshing? She's the second unlikely model to make headlines this week - Elly Mayday, a 25-year-old Canadian plus size pin-up girl and ovarian cancer survivor, recently landed a modeling gig for British Columbia-based Forever Yours Lingerie, rocking a shaved head and surgical scars in the ad.

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