疯狂时代，内敛低调成为时尚

疯狂时代，内敛低调成为时尚

As the runway revolves, one front-row fashion fixture ponders how practical dressing has come to feel like the most modern of ideas, and why designers haven’t quite caught on.

随着秀台旋转，一位前排的常客在思考为何实用的穿着方式成了最现代的理念，为何设计师们没有完全把握住这个理念。

It is before dawn on a frozen Sunday in upstate New York, where I have come to pack up two bedrooms. A handyman is arriving to build a small closet in one, and then both rooms will receive a fresh coat of paint. I’m sticking with the same colors — light green, a ballroom blue — that I chose 15 years ago, when the house was built. This decision to leave well enough alone, instead of hustling over to the paint store and driving myself nuts with choices, not to mention wasting my energy, seems more than sensible: It sums up everything I feel about style and comfort. Or should I say the revenge of comfort over style.

在一个冰冷的周日的黎明前，我去纽约州北部打包两间卧室的东西。一个杂务工要来给其中一间建一个小壁橱，然后，两间房将涂上新漆。我仍然选用淡绿色和舞厅蓝色，跟15年前修建这所房子时用的颜色一模一样。这个满足现状的决定似乎更理智，我不用匆忙赶到油漆店，被各种选择弄得要发疯，更别提还要浪费我的精力：这概括了我对时尚和舒适的所有感觉。也许我该说这是舒适对时尚的报复。

Folded over the back of a chair in my room, under a mohair throw, is an old suede kilt I had meant to begin wearing again. For me, the kilt nourishes a sense of freedom from fashion. It’s a classic, it’s sentimental and it’s one of the few garments I own that has truly improved with age. I hope I am wearing it at 90, tramping along in boots and a dog-haired sweater, the picture of civilized indifference.

一条旧的起绒苏格兰短裙压在我房间椅子后面的羊毛椅套底下，我打算再开始穿它。对我来说，这条短裙具有一种时尚自由感。它很经典，很感性，是少数几件我拥有的真正经得住时间考验的衣服。我希望自己90岁时穿上它，踩着靴子，穿着狗毛毛衣，一幅有教养的冷淡样子。

Although I like going to fashion shows, and appreciate the dedication of seamstresses and designers alike, I am not the right audience for most of what I see. But, then, how many women are? Who has the will — never mind the time and the money — to wear high fashion, at least as it has been conceived over the past decade, as something extreme, or “special,” in retail jargon? By now, I suspect, most people know that the purpose of runway shows is entertainment, and to create a feeling of desire. They understand that the main interest of high-fashion companies is economic rather than aesthetic. It’s to sell products and capture new markets, much as Coca-Cola and Apple do.

虽然我喜欢参加时装发布会，也欣赏裁缝和设计师们的投入，但是对大部分我看到的服装来说，我不是目标观众。但是又有多少女人是呢?谁愿意——更别提有时间和金钱——穿高级时装呢?至少在过去十年里，高级时装被认为是某种极端的东西，或者用零售业的行话来说是某种“特别”的东西。到如今，我猜大部分人都知道时装秀的目的是娱乐，是创造一种欲望。他们知道高级时装公司的主要兴趣是经济收入而非审美。跟可口可乐公司和苹果公司一样，它们看重的是销售产品，抢占新市场。

Notions like taste and practical chic are way too complex to sell today, when much of the world’s population is consumed with either acquisition or basic survival. For that reason it’s tough to talk about comfort and a moral economy of style without sounding grim or like one is trying to promote a car with three wheels (hey, but it drives!). On the other hand, this idea is not so far from something Coco Chanel offered when she arrived in New York, in March 1931. Asked by a reporter to define the fashionable woman, Chanel said, “She dresses well but not remarkably. . . . She disobeys fashion.” Then, perhaps thinking of her rival Elsa Schiaparelli, Chanel added, “But she is not eccentric. I hate eccentricity.” So she was extolling understatement and ease, yes, but also suggesting these choices reflected virtues like self-control and seriousness.

像品味和实用的别致这样的观念太复杂，如今根本推广不了，因为这世界上很多人忙于获得基本的生存需求。因此，谈论舒适和时尚的道德经济难免听起来很冷酷，或者像在努力推广只有三个轮子的汽车(嘿，但是它能开!)。另一方面，这个观念与可可·香奈儿(Coco Chanel)1931年3月到达纽约时说的话有点接近。一位记者让香奈儿给时尚女性下定义，香奈儿说，“她穿得很好，但是不引人注目……她不尊从时尚。”然后，也许是想到了她的对手艾尔莎·夏帕瑞丽(Elsa Schiaparelli)，香奈儿补充说，“但是她不古怪。我讨厌古怪。”所以她颂扬的是低调和舒适，不过她也暗示这些选择反映出自控和认真等美德。

Lately I’ve noticed many more women, all of them in the zone of careers and complicated family routines, all of them with an eye for fashion, gravitating toward an almost boyish uniform of slim-cut trousers, pullovers and flat shoes. Or a leather jacket with bland layers underneath. They’re hardly wearing makeup, so their complexions look fresh. (We all know that too much makeup ages everyone.) At the last round of shows in Paris, I noted that even my French sisters had begun to ditch their adored stilettos for low heels. That was quite a concession for them, I thought. Something must be up, because those women don’t do anything on a whim.

最近，我注意到很多女人——她们全都有事业和复杂的家庭生活，全都有时尚眼光——倾向于几乎带点男孩子气的服装：修身长裤，套头衫和平底鞋。或者是底部有平淡图层的皮夹克。她们几乎从不化妆，所以她们的肤色看起来很清新(我们都知道化妆太多让人老得快)。在巴黎的最后一轮时装秀上，我注意到连我的法国姐妹们也开始抛弃心爱的细高跟鞋，改穿低跟鞋。我认为对她们来说这是重大让步。肯定是发生了什么，因为这些女人做什么事都不是一时兴起。

Of course, in the 1990s, Helmut Lang and Jil Sander led a revolution with plain tailoring, neutral colors and natural hair and makeup. Lang’s style, in particular, proved popular with editors and buyers, many of whom had witnessed the sex gags of Jean Paul Gaultier and Thierry Mugler in the ’80s, and were sickened or just bored by them. More than a decade earlier, Halston, Stephen Burrows and Calvin Klein had created a template of modern informality, with clean sportswear and lightly constructed dresses for a generation that wanted to go braless. Indeed, these styles reflected not only broad social change, but also the loosening of designers’ grip on women’s bodies. Yet, by the early ’90s, with the exception of Marc Jacobs’s grunge collection for Perry Ellis, along with Zoran and Joan Vass, New York was largely obsessed with the retro trappings of nouvelle society glamour, down to fur-trimmed pencil skirts and gloves. No wonder women sought the anonymity of Lang and Sander.

当然，在20世纪九十年代，海尔姆特·朗(Helmut Lang)和吉尔·桑达(Jil Sander)用朴实的剪裁、中性的色调以及自然的发型和妆容领导了一场革命。尤其是朗的风格很受编辑和买家们的欢迎，她们中的很多人在八十年代见证并厌倦了让·保罗·高提耶(Jean Paul Gaultier)和蒂埃里·穆勒(Thierry Mugler)的性玩笑。十多年前，侯司顿(Halston)、斯蒂芬·巴罗斯(Stephen Burrows)和卡尔文·克莱恩(Calvin Klein)开创了现代休闲服的模板——简洁的运动服，为不想穿文胸的一代人设计的样式简单的连衣裙。实际上，这些风格不仅反映了广泛的社会变化，而且放松了设计师们对女性身体的过度关注。但是，在90年代早期，除了马克·雅可布(Marc Jacobs)为派瑞·艾力斯(Perry Ellis)设计的格郎基系列，以及卓然(Zoran)和Joan Vass，纽约主要被新社会魅力的复古服饰所控制，比如镶皮毛边的铅笔裙和手套。难怪那时候的女人们追逐朗和桑达这样的无名之辈。

What’s changed since then? From my perspective, having written enthusiastically about the conceptual, art-inspired fashion of the past 20 years — whether by Martin Margiela, Miuccia Prada or Raf Simons — I can say we’ve become increasingly weary of this approach. As the roles of women kept evolving during the ’80s and ’90s, it was easy, maybe necessary, to attach meaning to clothes. They were powerful, daring, etc. But, let’s face it, much of the language around clothes today sounds forced. I was touched when, at the January men’s shows in Milan, Prada talked about her rather straightforward tailoring, which included a few women’s looks as well, saying, “I wanted to make it real. And I like that now.”

从那以后发生了什么变化?我在过去20年里热情地书写概念化的、受艺术启发的时装——不管是来自马丁·马吉拉(Martin Margiela)的、缪西娅·普拉达(Miuccia Prada)，还是拉夫·西蒙斯(Raf Simons)——我可以说我们越来越厌倦这种方式了。在八九十年代，女性的角色在不断变化，所以很容易也有必要给服装赋予意义。它们是有力的，大胆的，等等。但是，让我们面对现实吧：如今围绕服装的大部分语言听起来都很牵强。在1月份的米兰男装秀上，普拉达谈起她相当直接的剪裁方式(其中也包括几套女装)时说，“我想让它看起来真实。我现在喜欢真实。”我听了很有感触。

So do most women, though this wish doesn’t strike them as a novelty. All the same, the desire to be comfortable is profound, shaping attitudes and markets. Witness the explosion of so-called lifestyle brands like Vince, which last year became a publicly traded company, an indication that the audience is hardly baby boomers looking for less complicated stuff. For the most part, with the exception of Stella McCartney, who makes a point of including stylishly executed casual looks like this spring’s tapered track pants and tops, high fashion ignores this consumer.

大多数女人也喜欢真实，虽然这个愿望对她们来说不是新鲜事。尽管如此，舒适的欲望意义深远，它塑造态度和市场。以Vince这样的所谓的生活方式品牌的大爆发为证。去年Vince成了一家公开上市公司，这表明观众不是婴儿潮出生的一代，他们寻找的是不那么复杂的东西。除了史黛拉·麦卡特尼 (Stella McCartney)——它特别注意把时髦的行政休闲装包含进来，比如今年春天的锥形运动裤和上衣——高级时装公司大多忽视了这个消费群体。

But things are changing. I perked up when I saw that Alber Elbaz based Lanvin’s prefall collection around chic sweatpants, mixing them with wool cocoon coats and low-heeled pumps. I had the sense that he was keen to tackle the matter of comfort without sacrificing luxury, and he succeeded. Probably no one defines the modern sense of comfort with more authority than Phoebe Philo of Céline. Not long ago, she stunned loyalists with a loosey-goosey collection of long, frayed dresses, soft pajama-like pants and sandals lined with fur. Well, guess what? Other designers are still knocking off that collection. Although Philo has steered Céline somewhat away from that specific style, as you would expect of a designer eager to stay ahead of her competitors, she remains committed to its essence. For me, that collection captured something rare in today’s world of anxious, self-created stars — and that is a woman of indeterminate age who knows what she likes and has shrugged off what she no longer has any use for, and maybe never did. If that sounds rather limited, that’s the point. I’ll stick with the same paint colors and my lovely old kilt, because, it turns out, there’s a surprising amount of harmony in unremarkable choices.

但是事情在变化。当我看到阿尔伯·艾尔巴茨(Alber Elbaz)设计的浪凡(Lanvin)早秋系列围绕时髦的宽松运动裤、羊毛茧形外套和低跟便鞋展开时，我的精神为之一振。我有一种感觉，他热切地想在不牺牲奢华的前提下解决舒适性的问题，而且他成功了。很可能，就现代舒适感的定义这个话题而言，没人比Céline的菲比·菲罗(Phoebe Philo)更权威性。不久之前，她推出的系列十分松弛，让支持者们大吃一惊，其中包括松口的长连衣裙，柔软的宽松长裤和镶毛边的凉鞋。呃，你猜怎么着?其他设计师还在模仿那个系列。虽然菲罗如今已经多少把思琳引离了那种风格，因为设计师们总想走在其他竞争者前面，但是她仍然坚持它的精髓。在我看来，那个系列体现了在当今焦虑的、自创明星的社会里罕见的某种东西——它表现的是一个年龄不确定的女性，她知道自己喜欢什么，摆脱了她不再需要或者说也许从来没有需要过的东西。那也许听起来很有局限性，但是它就是关键。我将继续使用同样的油漆颜色，穿那件可爱的旧短裙，因为，结果证明，在不起眼的选择中包含令人惊讶的和谐。