黄背心的力量
荧光黄色安全背心“gilet jaune”已成为法国人对燃料价格、不断加剧的收入不公等问题的强烈抗议的代名词，总有一天，它将走进博物馆，成为历史上最有效的抗议服装之一。
Whoever chose it (and no one is claiming authorship, just as no one has stepped forward as a leader of the movement), and for whatever reason, instinct or insight, it was a potent idea. So effective, in fact, that on Tuesday the French president, Emmanuel Macron, announced that fuel taxes would not be raised. There hasn’t been such a compelling sartorial symbol of revolt since the Sans-culottes seized on their trousers as the point of visual difference with the aristocracy during the French Revolution.
无论是谁选择了它(没有人声称是自己的主意，正如没有人站出来承认自己是运动的领导者)，无论出于何种原因，是本能抑或灼见，这都是一个强有力的创意。事实上，它的效果好到法国总统埃马纽埃尔·马克龙(Emmanuel Macron)于周二宣布燃油税不会上涨。自从法国大革命期间无套裤汉(Sans-culottes，法国大革命时期对城市平民的称呼。——译注)拿他们的裤子作为同贵族的视觉差异之后，再也没有出现过如此引人注目的服装象征符号。
That’s probably not a coincidence.
这可能不是巧合。
The yellow vest is immediately visible in all of the pictures of the protests, peaceful or not, and impossible to miss even on the small screens of social media. It is easy to slip on over any outfit, and instantly transformative. It is widely understood as a distress signal.
这件黄色背心很快就出现在抗议活动的所有照片中，无论是不是和平抗议，即使在社交媒体的小屏幕上，你也不会错过它。它很容易套在任何服装外面，有摇身一变的效果。它被广泛理解为遇险的信号。
It is associated with industries of the working class, like construction. And it, or a garment very much like it, has been owned by all French motorists since 2008, when a law went into effect requiring car owners to keep a high-visibility garment in their vehicle in case of problems. (Other European countries have similar laws.)
它与工人阶级从事的行业有关，比如建筑业。自2008年以来，所有法国驾车者都拥有这样一件或者同它非常类似的服装，当时出台了一条法律，要求车主在车内放一件能见度高的服装，以备出现问题时使用。(其他欧洲国家也有类似的法律。)
Little wonder the protests have spread to Belgium: The uniform of this revolution is as accessible as the frustration and fury. In Serbia, a deputy for the opposition party showed up at the parliament and warned: “We want normal gas prices, or else you’ll get yellow vests on the streets of Belgrade and Serbia.”
难怪抗议活动会蔓延到比利时：这件革命的制服就像挫折和愤怒一样容易传播。在塞尔维亚，反对党的一名代表在议会上警告说：“我们希望汽油价格正常，否则贝尔格莱德和塞尔维亚的街道上就会出现黄背心。”
The vest is also notably inexpensive to acquire (available on Amazon.fr for €5.90, or about $6.70). And it’s so ubiquitous that even those who aren’t officially part of the movement can seem to take part. Witness the glee on social media when President Macron disembarked for the G-20 summit in Argentina only to be met by airport workers wearing … bright yellow hazard vests.It’s better than any soapbox. “Historically, and presently, dress practices have been and are being used to debate what it means to be a citizen, what it means to belong, or not to belong, to a certain body politic,” said Erin K. Vearncombe, a lecturer at Princeton University who specializes in the cultural anthropology of dress. “Often, these practices are used by individuals that have not been included in the body politic, to contest political structures and bring about change.”
这件背心的价格也非常低廉(Amazon.fr上售价为5.90欧元，约合6.70美元)。它无处不在，即使没有正式参与运动的人也可以加入其中。马克龙总统去参加在阿根廷举行的20国集团峰会，下机时只有机场工作人员迎接他，他们穿着……明亮的黄色安全背心，看看这一幕在社交网络上激起了多大的欢乐吧。它比任何演讲台都好。“从历史上到现在，着装已经并且正在被用来讨论公民身份究竟意味着什么，属于或不属于某个国民团体究竟意味着什么，”普林斯顿大学(Princeton University)专门研究着装的文化人类学讲师艾林·K·沃恩康布(Erin K. Vearncombe)说。“通常情况下，没有被包含在某个国民团体之内的个人会用这种着装方式来抗议政治建筑，并且带来变革。”
Hello, Yellow Vests in their yellow vests.
你好，穿着黄背心的黄背心。
And yet it is getting harder and harder to use clothing as this kind of tool, or find the kind of clothing that can function as this kind of tool. The clear demarcations of class and values traditionally associated with dress have been eroding for a long time now, because of both the general social revolt against formality and fashion’s own tendency to co-opt and thus denature so many of what were once the outfits of the outsiders and the disenfranchised.
然而，使用服装作为这种工具变得越来越困难，找到能发挥这种作用的服装也越来越困难。很长一段时间以来，传统上与服装相关的阶级和价值观的明确划分已经受到侵蚀，这既是因为社会对俗套的普遍反对，也是因为时尚界自身旁征博引的倾向，许多原本属于外来者和权利被剥夺者的服装，性质都发生了变化。
The torn denim and tie-dye of the hippie generation have been absorbed by street wear and the runway; the leathers and berets of 1968 embraced by Dior; the skulls and safety pins of the British punks adopted by Alexander McQueen and Versace. It’s impossible to take a garment seriously as a cry of rage or despair once it has hit the haute couture catwalk.Which is too bad, because clothes have played important supporting roles in the narrative of revolt and extremism, whether right or left, for centuries. Recently more than ever.
嬉皮士一代的破旧丹宁和扎染已经被街头风和伸展台所吸收;Dior采纳了1968年的皮革和贝雷帽;Alexander McQueen和Versace使用英国朋克的骷髅和安全别针。一旦某件服装出现在高级定制时装秀里，就不可能被当做愤怒或绝望的呐喊来认真对待。这太糟糕了，因为几个世纪以来，服装在反叛和极端主义的叙事中发挥了重要的补充作用，无论是右派还是左派。近年来尤其如此。
The suffragists settled on color — white, green, purple — to represent their demands and characters. (As we all now know, since Hillary Clinton directly referred to the practice in her campaign.)
女性参政论者决定使用颜色——白色、绿色、紫色——来表达她们的要求和性格。(自从希拉里·克林顿[Hillary Clinton]在自己的竞选活动中直接援引这一做法后，我们现在都已经知道了。)
More recently, the pink pussy hats worn during the Women’s March in 2017 served as a visual stalking point, as did the black dresses worn at the Golden Globes in support of #TimesUp and the black garb adopted by female lawmakers at President Trump’s first State of the Union. The black boots, sweats, pants and ski masks of the Antifa movement are a more broad-based and free-floating signifier of anarchy.Still, black is so ubiquitous and so open to interpretation, it somewhat undermines its ability to be an effective protest garment. It’s momentarily powerful but not specific enough for the effects to linger. That explains, in part, why “many of these practices do not translate into the nomenclature of the movements in the way that yellow vests did, pretty much immediately,” Dr. Vearncombe said.
更近一些的事件发生在2017年的女性大游行上，人们戴着粉红色猫耳帽作为视觉关注点;还有在金球奖上的女星，她们身穿黑裙，支持网上的“#TimesUp”(是时候了)活动;以及特朗普发表第一次国情咨文时身穿黑色服装的女性议员。反法西斯(Antifa)运动中的黑色靴子、卫衣、长裤和滑雪口罩，是一种较泛泛的、自由发散的无政府主义表征。不过，黑色无处不在，它可以有各种解释，这有点损害了它作为抗议服装的效果。它拥有短暂的力量，但不足以让效果在你心头萦绕不去。沃恩康布说，这有助于解释为什么“许多这类做法并没有像黄色背心那样，几乎立即转化为运动的代名词。”
You can count such transcendent wardrobe totems on one hand: the Sans-culottes, the Brownshirts. (It may seem wrong to lump the Brownshirts with the others, but it was a political movement identified by clothing.) So what made the difference?
像这样超凡出众的图腾式服装屈指可数：无套裤汉、褐衫队(希特勒于1923年创建的武装组织。——译注)。(将褐衫队与其他服装混为一谈似乎不妥，但它是一场由服装命名的政治运动。)那么究竟是什么造成了不同?
In part, the accessibility of the yellow vest itself. But the decentralized nature of the movement also probably played a part, making the vests even more important as a unifying thread and call to arms.Protest movements without such a uniform seem to be the exception in modern times, and can be less effective for it. Occupy Wall Street, in 2011 lacked a visual cohesion. Protesters had many looks, a sprawl that was mirrored in the range of their grievances.
在某种程度上，这是来自黄色背心本身的亲和力。但是运动的分散性本质可能也有作用，这使得背心更加重要，成了一种统一的线索和战斗号令。没有这种制服的抗议活动在现代似乎很少见，并且正因如此，可能效果也比较差。2011年的占领华尔街运动就缺乏视觉凝聚力。抗议者的外观多种多样，这种杂乱反映出他们的不满情绪也是多种多样的。
“The dressed body within the body politic is often the only opportunity underrepresented individuals have to participate in negotiations of citizenship, but it’s an amazing opportunity, too,” Dr. Vearncombe said. “It is every day, it is participatory, it is collaborative and democratic.”
“在政治体中，着装的身体往往是缺乏代表的个体参与公民身份谈判的唯一机会，”沃恩康布说。“它是日常的，它是参与的，它是协作和民主的。”
It should not really come as a surprise that France — the country that spawned the Sans-culottes, where la mode is considered part of the culture and the patrimony as well as an instrument of regime change — understands this.
法国是产生无套裤汉的国家，时尚被认为是文化和遗产的一部分，以及政权更迭的工具，这个国家能够理解这一点是毫不意外的。
It is not an accident that during the most recent Yellow Vests riot, the windows of French stores like Chanel and Dior were smashed. (Ironically, in 2008, when the yellow vest law was first introduced, the Chanel designer Karl Lagerfeld appeared in an ad touting its lifesaving capabilities.)A dress for a dress. Once again clothes have come to represent the difference between the haves and the have-nots.
在最近的黄背心骚乱期间，Chanel和Dior等品牌的商店橱窗被砸碎，也不是偶然的。(具有讽刺意味的是，2008年首次引入黄背心法时，Chanel设计师卡尔·拉格菲尔德[Karl Lagerfeld]曾经在广告中宣传它救人性命的能力。)以眼还眼，以衣还衣。服装再一次呈现了富人和穷人之间的差异。
