She's a twenty-first-century female gladiator of the lost tribe of Glamazonia, battling for supremacy against a pride of lions. As over-the-top as it sounds, that's a bit of what Danielle Scutt seems to be about, if we're to judge from the uncompromisingly fierce collection she sent out in her first solo runway show. In fact, her neo-feminist power vixens in their patent bondage-strapped animal prints aren't really debutantes. Scutt has shown twice with Fashion East, and some of her signatures, like her red-hot touch with denim, are becoming recognizable.
Her most salable pieces are short knife-pleat denim skirts and the high-waisted, fifties-inflected jeans she's been working on since she left Central Saint Martins. Other dresses in variations on zebra stripes look destined for plenty of magazine editorial shoots. Scutt still has a way to go with her edit, though. Short and sweet is probably not quite the right motto to recommend to a kick-ass designer, but anyway, some advice: She needn't have killed herself to put out quite so much in the way of swimwear and commercial pieces.
