The year of the Rutt

backstage @ gary bigeni

I first noticed Rachel Rutt one year ago, after Chic Management included her in the agency's RAFW 2008 newbies list when I was compiling this NEWS.com.au blog post on the season's new faces. One month later, when local media caught onto the lack of runway diversity story, which provided the catalyst for Vogue Italia's all-black July 2008 edition, the Eurasian beauty, who is half Singaporean and half English, told The Australian that the local fashion industry was "very Caucasian-oriented". But we didn't have to wait long before seeing a lot more of Rutt. In August, she walked in the David Jones Spring/Summer 0809 show and booked a series of lookbooks, from Akira to Gail Sorronda to Minty Meets Munt. And as became increasingly obvious at this year's RAFW, 18 year-old Rutt was Chic Management's breakout star at the event, walking in more shows than any other Chic Management model according to the agency.

Some might recall that this time last year, the same applied to Myf Shepherd. Although unknown prior to RAFW, Shepherd went on to be booked by Gucci and Prada for the Resort 2009 shows last June, before blitzing the SS09 shows three months later.

Well guess who is New York-bound at the end of this month? That's right, Miss Rutt.

For those northern hemisphere modelwatchers reading this blog, please note - as was pointed out on frockwriter's parallel Twitter coverage during RAFW - Rutt was not only in high rotation on Sydney's catwalks three weeks ago, she was also booked for two videos which provided the backdrop to two separate shows over consecutive nights at the event: Kirrily Johnston and Gary Bigeni.

For those who haven't already seen the first one via a couple of other blogs which filmed straight off the runway, here is the Kirrily Johnston film made by Alex Goddard over at Oyster Productions:



And here is Nick Waterman’s 'Beside Ourselves' film, which played the following evening during Bigeni's show.

Bigeni kindly uploaded this to YouTube for frockwriter and after that version seemed a little fuzzy, reuploaded to the better-quality Vimeo hosting service. The video is however still extremely fuzzy. But you get the gist.

Beside Ourselves from Nick Waterman on Vimeo.

Looking forward to tracking Rutt's progress over the coming months.