Danielle Scutt has a strong, sui generis design point of view. Actually, she has two of them: There's the Scutt who showed up on the Spring 2012 runway, all slouchy denim and rudegirl attitude, and then there's the Scutt of this season's forties-inflected collection. What unites the two is a lack of prissiness: Whether in her tomboy mode or tapping a vein of glam, Scutt is a designer with a commitment to conveying female strength through her clothes. That's almost enough of a through-line to stave off whiplash. Still, it's hard to look at the new collection—a tightly edited group mainly comprising well-wrought, full-skirted dresses—and not wish that it had been infused with Spring's streetwise sneer. Just so, last season you found yourself looking in vain for some of the effortless womanliness in plain view here today, and in Scutt's collection for Fall/Winter 2011. If and when Scutt manages to bring the womanliness and the toughness together, she'll be a force to be reckoned with.
