冬季时尚话题：女王的手套

女王的手套

It is an iconic image: Queen Elizabeth in her royal carriage, gently waving a graceful gloved hand.

这是个标志性形象：女王伊丽莎白戴着优雅得体的手套，坐在皇家马车上轻轻地挥着手。

Few of us can live like a queen, but we can wear that glove.

我们没几个人能像女王那样生活，但那样的手套还是戴得起的。

Or the pure merino wool pair worn by the duchess of Cambridge, or the singer Rihanna’s long French lace ones, or even the opera-length satin sheaths that set off Lady Mary’s gowns in “Downton Abbey.”

或者是剑桥公爵夫人戴的那种美利奴羊毛手套，或者是歌手蕾哈娜(Rihanna)的法式蕾丝长手套，或者是《唐顿庄园》(Downton Abbey)里给玛丽小姐(Lady Mary)的礼服添彩的长袖绸缎手套。

Each of these gloves was sewn in a converted cowshed on a farm in East Sussex, under the direction of the willowy Genevieve James.

这些手套都是缝制于东萨西克斯一个农场里经改造过的牛棚，领头的是身形窈窕的吉纳维芙·詹姆斯(Genevieve James)。

Her gloves are not heavy workaday leathers for bracing against the harsher elements but elegant accessories for women willing to pay, say, 360 pounds, or $570, for the added panache of a pair of full-length pure-wool gloves cuffed with silver fox fur.

她的手套不是抵御寒冷的厚重工作皮革手套，而是为愿意花大价钱让自己大放异彩的女人设计的优雅配饰，比如，袖口镶饰银狐毛的纯羊毛全袖手套的售价为360英镑(约合3460元人民币)，约合570美元。

As design director of Cornelia James, the company founded by her mother in London in 1946, Ms. James is working to keep the British glove-making heritage alive and to expand to a broader international market.

詹姆斯是科妮莉亚·詹姆斯(Cornelia James)公司的设计总监。该公司是她母亲于1946年在伦敦创立。她的目标是延续英国的手套制作传统，把它推向更广阔的国际市场。

“Mum was great,” Ms. James said over a steaming cup of milky tea in the atelier, as sheep grazed outside. “She was an Austrian Jewish refugee who had to get out very quickly from Vienna in 1939.

“我妈妈很了不起，”詹姆斯在工作室里端着一杯热腾腾的奶茶说道，窗外有绵羊在吃草。“她是来自奥地利的犹太难民，1939年匆忙逃出了维也纳。”

“But mother had just finished studying fashion design at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts, coincidentally the same college that turned down Hitler. So she came eventually to England with a suitcase full of the colored leather that she had been using to make things.”

“妈妈当时刚在维也纳艺术学院完成服装设计的学业，巧的是，当年也正是这所学院拒绝了希特勒。她辗转来到英国，箱子里装满她做设计用的各色皮革。”

War was starting and while people had no money to buy couture clothing, Ms. James said, they could afford a handbag or gloves. Her mother survived the war years making and selling those.

詹姆斯说，战争开始了，人们没钱购买高级定制服装，但他们还买得起手袋或手套。她妈妈靠制作和销售这些东西挺过了战争岁月。

Her breakthrough came after the war. She caught the attention of the royal couturier Norman Hartnell, who was designing Princess Elizabeth’s dress for her marriage in 1947 to Lt. Philip Mountbatten.

战后，她的事业迎来转机。她引起了皇室裁缝诺曼·哈特内尔(Norman Hartnell)的注意。后者当时正在为1947年伊丽莎白公主与菲利普·蒙巴顿中尉(Lt. Philip Mountbatten)的婚礼设计礼服。

“My mother was invited to design all of the gloves for her trousseau,” Ms. James said. “Unlike these days, when you went on your honeymoon on the royal yacht you needed several pairs of gloves. This was really the start of her association with the royal family.”

“我妈妈被请去给女王设计嫁妆里的所有手套，”詹姆斯说，“那时候跟现在不同，乘坐皇家游艇度蜜月时你需要好几双手套。这真的是她与皇室交往的开端。”

Decades later, in 1979, the business was awarded a royal warrant, the mark of recognition for suppliers to the monarchy.

几十年后，这家公司在1979年获得英国皇室供货认证。

Cornelia James died in 1999 at age 82. In the 1950s, at the peak of her long career, she had 250 workers under her wing in a former dairy in Brighton.

1999年，82岁的科妮莉亚·詹姆斯去世。20世纪50年代，在她漫长事业的巅峰期，她麾下有250名工人在布赖顿的一个奶制品厂改造的车间里工作。

But the popularity of gloves as a fashion accessory waned and the business now has just three sewers, known as machinists, working in tandem with Ms. James and her husband, Andrew Lawson. Mr. Lawson measures and cuts the fabric in the atelier, where bolts of fine wool lean against the walls and bobbins of colorful thread occupy rows of shelves under bright overhead lights.

但是，手套作为服装配饰的潮流衰退了，这家公司现在只有三名裁缝，称为机械工，他们和詹姆斯及其丈夫安德鲁·劳森(Andrew Lawson)协同工作。劳森在工作室里测量、剪裁面料，一匹匹细羊毛靠在墙边，一卷卷彩色丝线摆放在一排排架子上，天花板上是明亮的顶灯。

Here they make bridal gloves of lace, cotton, duchess satin or silk that sell for £130; stylish cotton race-day gloves for the Ascot set (up to £130); and fine wool pairs of the type a royal might wear to a ribbon-cutting event (up to £155). There’s also a cotton “Camilla” glove in a black and white yin-yang pattern (£110) and a taupe merino wool “Beatrice” with a demure bow atop the wrist (£70).

他们在这里生产用蕾丝、棉、素库缎或丝绸做成的新娘手套，售价130英镑;时髦的阿斯科特赛马会(Ascot)比赛日棉质手套(最高130英镑);皇室成员参加剪彩仪式可能会戴的细羊毛手套(最高155英镑)。还有黑白八卦图案的棉质“卡米拉”(Camilla)手套(110英镑);手腕上镶着端庄蝴蝶结的灰褐色“比阿特丽斯”(Beatrice)美利奴羊毛手套(70英镑)。

Evening gloves can be opera length and lacy (£66), in fine netting (£100), or duchess satin trimmed with Swarovski crystals for the red carpet (£130).

晚装手套包括蕾丝长袖手套(66英镑)、细网眼手套(100英镑)以及走红毯用的镶有施华洛世奇水晶的素库缎手套(130英镑)。

For more practical wear, a line of colorful cashmere gloves, made from best-quality yarn and knitted in Scotland, sells for £65. There is also a newer line of Italian-made nappa leatherski gloves and deerskin mittens (£260 a pair), lined in possum fur.

更实用的手套包括在苏格兰用最高档的彩色羊绒制作的系列，售价65英镑。还有一个新系列——边缘镶有鼠貂毛的意大利软羊皮手套和鹿皮连指手套(一双260英镑)。

While members of the royal family are appreciative and loyal customers, Mr. Lawson says, the company cannot depend solely on the queen.

劳森说，虽说皇室成员是他们十分感激的忠实顾客，但公司不能只靠女王。

“The queen is very, very, very cost conscious,” he said, clearly trying not to cross a line by saying so. “And our gloves are obviously quite expensive. So she will send them back to be repaired if they lose a stitch. One year she might have 20 pairs and the next year none, and the next year 15. And she never loses them, which is why most people order new gloves. She’s still wearing certain gloves of ours that we made 15 years ago.”

“女王非常、非常、非常具有成本意识，”他这么说显然是不想得罪皇室。“我们的手套显然十分昂贵。所以如果手套脱线，她会送回来修补。某一年她可能会买20双手套，下一年可能一双也不买，再下一年可能又买15双。她的手套从来不丢，很多人买新手套都是因为旧的丢了。我们15年前做的一些手套，她现在还戴着。”

With two stylish ridges, known as points, and measuring five inches from the base of the thumb up the arm, the queen’s made-to-measure design sells for £110. The white gloves are washable, a relief for someone who shakes so many hands.

这双女王定制手套有两条时髦的凸条纹棱线，从拇趾跟到胳膊长五英寸，售价为110英镑。这双白手套可以水洗，对于需要经常握手的人来说，这真是让人欣慰。

“Yes, she insists on that,” Mr. Lawson said. “It’s one of the reasons she wears fabric gloves rather than leather. When she goes on a trip she’ll have two or three or four pairs because she’s shaking all these hands.”

“是的，她坚持要能水洗的，”劳森说。“这是她戴织物手套而非皮手套的一个原因。她在旅行中要准备两双、三双或四双手套，因为她要和很多人握手。”

The product that emerges from this bucolic country workshop can’t compete in sheer numbers with the mass production coming out of Asia, but Mr. Lawson says the brand has a distinctive appeal, even in a country like China.

单从价格角度讲，这些来自乡村田园作坊的产品肯定拼不过亚洲大批量生产的产品，但是劳森说，这个品牌具有独特的魅力，甚至对中国这样的国家也有吸引力。

“We’re never going to compete on price, so we try to do better on quality and integrity of the design,” he said. “In particular, the Chinese are coming to realize more and more that fashion is not just about the big brands that everybody’s got.”

“在价格方面，我们永远没有优势，所以我们努力在品质和设计方面做得更好，”他说。“尤其是，中国人越来越意识到，高级时装不只是指人人都能买到的大品牌。”

“To them we are their best-kept secret — ‘only I know about Cornelia James and I want to keep it to myself’ — which is nice in some ways, but obviously we’d like for hundreds of millions of Chinese people to be buying our gloves,” he said with a chuckle.

“我们是他们保守得最严密的秘密—— ‘只有我知道科妮莉亚·詹姆斯，我想守住这个秘密’——从某种角度讲，这挺好的，但我们当然希望数以亿计的中国人都来买我们的手套，”他轻声笑道。

The brand sells “very well in Japan,” Ms. James said, “because we tick all the boxes there: They love the heritage, they love the story, they like a really beautifully made, small product with detail. Japan is our most important customer.”

詹姆斯说，这个品牌“在日本”卖得“很好”，“因为我们符合他们的所有偏好：他们喜欢传统，喜欢我们的品牌故事，喜欢做得非常漂亮、具有精致细节的小巧物品。日本是我们最重要的市场。”

“Where we’d really like to sell in is the States,” she added. But the changing structure of the retail sector, which is turning many of the once-grand department stores into boutique concession stands, has made it more difficult to interest American store buyers in smaller-margin luxury gloves, she said.

她补充说，“我们真的特别希望销往美国”，但是零售业的结构在发生变化，很多宏伟的商场变成了精品专卖店，所以更难让美国的店铺买家们对利润更小的奢侈手套产生兴趣。

Meanwhile, the value of the royal warrant has been incalculable.

与此同时，英国皇室供货认证的价值是不可估量的。

“It’s a real door opener,” Mr. Lawson said. “Everyone knows it stands for excellence and quality in what you are doing. And you can’t buy it at any price. It has to be given to you.”

“它真的是打开了一扇大门，”劳森说，“所有人都知道它代表着优秀和品质。它是金钱买不到的，只能通过授予的形式获得。”

And while the company does make flashy lime-green-and-fuschia items for stage shows like “Mamma Mia,” many of its products are simply, subtly beautiful.

虽然这家公司也为《妈妈咪呀》(Mamma Mia)等舞台剧制作黄绿色和梅红色的花哨手套，但它的很多产品是简洁、精妙的美丽物件。