前紅毯時代的名媛們是怎麼穿衣的

Imagine a time before the red carpet.

想象一下紅毯出現之前的世界。

(Shock, horror, impossible — how did we ever get dressed in the morning? I know, it’s asking a lot to even contemplate, but bear with me.)

（震驚，恐怖，不可思議——我們早上起來穿什麼呢？我知道，光是想想就覺得很有壓力，不過請允許我講下去。）

A time before paid brand ambassadors. A time when we were not schooled, every day, by social media and blogs and people pages and best-dressed lists to believe that how a celebrity looked while making a public and promotional appearance was the paradigm for how everyone should look. A time when fashion role models were not clothed by other people with agendas of their own and did not change their look with the change of a contract. A time when “street style” had not been co-opted by brands themselves, and people actually dressed in their own wardrobes, as opposed to a wardrobe lent to them for the express purpose of getting photographed in the course of their “real” staged lives.

想想付費的品牌大使出現之前的那些年。那時，我們不是每天都接受社交媒體、博客、名人主頁和最佳着裝榜的教育，認爲名人公開亮相或進行宣傳時的着裝方式是每個人都應該效仿的典範。那時，時尚偶像們不是讓其他人（他們有着自己的計劃）來決定自己穿什麼，在合同到期之前不敢改變自己的造型。那時，“街頭時尚”還沒有被品牌同化，人們真的是用自己衣櫥裏的服裝進行搭配，而不是用借來的衣服在“真實的”舞臺生活中讓人拍照。

A time when having your own style was an authentic and necessary goal, and the best way to achieve it was to study the women who had done it themselves. If you could find them.

那時，擁有自己的風格是一個真實和必要的目標，而實現這一目標的最佳方式是研究那些已經實現目標的女人的做法——如果你能找到她們的話。

As awards season looms, starting with the Gotham Independent Film Awards later this month and culminating more than 13 statuette ceremonies later with the Oscars, and we prepare to be inundated with a cascade of dress-like-this red carpet images, that time is worth revisiting.

隨着頒獎季的臨近——先是本月底的哥譚獨立電影獎(Gotham Independent Film Awards)，高潮是將頒發超過13個小金人的奧斯卡獎頒獎禮(Oscars)，我們已做好準備被一大堆“像這樣着裝”的紅毯照片淹沒——我們值得重溫那個時代。

How to do it, you ask? Get thee to a museum.

你會問：怎麼重溫呢？去博物館嘍。

This month the Costume Institute at the Met and the Palais Galliera in Paris are unveiling shows dedicated to celebrating and showcasing the eyes and wardrobes of two different private women of extreme style: “La Robe Retrouvée: Les Robes-Trésors de la Comtesse Greffulhe” (“Fashion Regained: The Treasured Dresses of Countess Greffulhe”) at the Paris fashion museum, and “Jacqueline de Ribes: The Art of Style” at the Met.

本月（11月），大都會藝術博物館(Met)時裝學院(Costume Institute)和巴黎時尚博物館加列拉宮(Palais Galliera)正在舉辦兩場展覽，讚美和展示兩位具有鮮明風格的不同女性的眼光和衣櫥：巴黎時尚博物館舉辦的是“重新流行的時尚：女伯爵伊麗莎白·格雷菲勒的珍貴連衣裙”(Fashion Regained: The Treasured Dresses of Countess Greffulhe)；大都會藝術博物館舉辦的是“傑奎琳·德里貝斯：時尚的藝術”(Jacqueline de Ribes: The Art of Style)。

Is it a coincidence that two of the most important fashion institutions decided to curate directionally similar shows at about the same time? Possibly. Or perhaps it’s a reaction to the current ethos.

這兩家重要的時尚機構幾乎在同一時間決定組織方向類似的展覽，這是巧合嗎？也許是。不過，這也可能是對當下社會風氣的自然反應。

“We always talk about the designers, but rarely about the clients,” said Olivier Saillard, director of the Galliera, explaining his choice. But, he said, “it is the clients that may have the most to teach us.”

加列拉宮的館長奧利維耶·薩亞爾(Olivier Saillard)在解釋他的選擇時說：“我們總是談論設計師，但是很少談論他們的客戶，而最能教育我們的可能是那些客戶。”

About? “Not buying a lot, but filtering through fashion to find out what is right for you,” said Harold Koda, curator in charge at the Costume Institute. The two men were not speaking to each other (they weren’t even speaking the same language, and these statements are from entirely different discussions) but they were clearly on the same conceptual page.

教育我們什麼呢？“不要買很多衣服，而是從時尚中篩選出適合自己的衣服，”時裝學院的策展主管哈羅德·科達(Harold Koda)說。他們倆不是在交談（他們甚至說的不是同一種語言，他們的這些話來自毫無關聯的對話），但他們的想法顯然一致。

The Met show, which has been in the works for eight years, since Mr. Koda and his fellow curator, Andrew Bolton, had lunch with Countess de Ribes in her Paris apartment, includes 60 outfits, primarily evening gowns, from the 1960s through the 1990s (before the ’60s, Mr. Koda said, Countess de Ribes gave most of her clothes to charity).

大都會藝術博物館的展覽已經籌劃了八年，始於科達和策展同事安德魯·博爾頓(Andrew Bolton)在德里貝斯女伯爵的巴黎公寓裏共進午餐之後。這場展覽包括從20世紀60年代至90年代的60套服裝，以晚禮服爲主（科達說，德里貝斯女伯爵把60年代之前的大部分服裝捐給了慈善機構）。

One of Truman Capote’s original swans, along with Gloria Vanderbilt and Marella Agnelli, Jacqueline de Ribes was famed for her Nefertiti-like profile, immortalized by Richard Avedon, and celebrated for her taste, often collaborating with the couturiers who dressed her so that her clothes would be, Mr. Koda said, labeled “Jacqueline de Ribes for Christian Dior under Marc Bohan.”

傑奎琳·德里貝斯曾（和格洛麗亞·範德比爾特[Gloria Vanderbilt]和馬雷拉·阿涅利[Marella Agnelli]一起）是杜魯門·卡波特(Truman Capote)的靈感來源。她的側臉酷似納費提提(Nefertiti)，理查德·埃夫登(Richard Avedon)爲她拍攝的照片令她永垂不朽，她的品味得到人們的讚賞。她經常與爲她設計服裝的設計師們合作，她的服裝因此被稱爲“馬克·博安(Marc Bohan)爲迪奧(Christian Dior)設計的傑奎琳·德里貝斯牌服裝”。

By 1982, she had her own eponymous clothing business (it closed in 1995), and as one of the first socialites-turned-designers, she paved the way for names like Carolina Herrera and Tory Burch. Her hallmark was, Mr. Koda said, a “kind of idiosyncratic exoticism” marked by saturated colors, rigorous lines, asymmetry and an appreciation for the power of a strategically placed ruffle.

到1982年，德里貝斯已經擁有自己的同名服裝公司（1995年關門），作爲第一批社會名流出身的設計師之一，她爲Carolina Herrera和Tory Burch等品牌開闢了道路。科達說，德里貝斯的特點是“獨特的異國風情”——飽滿的色彩、精細的線條、不對稱和設計巧妙的褶皺。

The Galliera exhibition has 50 dresses from couturiers like Charles Frederick Worth, Fortuny and Jeanne Lanvin, which evolve from the lavishly embroidered and structured gowns of the turn of the century to looser, more flowing and feathered pieces, all of which once belonged to the woman who inspired the character of the Duchess of Guermantes in Marcel Proust’s “In Search of Lost Time.”

加列拉宮的展覽包括多位設計師設計的50件禮服，比如查爾斯·弗雷德裏克·沃思(Charles Frederick Worth)、福圖尼(Fortuny)和讓娜·朗萬(Jeanne Lanvin)，從20世紀初有着奢華刺繡和精緻剪裁的禮服發展爲更寬鬆流暢輕盈的服裝——所有這些都曾經屬於伊麗莎白·格雷菲勒。她是馬塞爾·普魯斯特(Marcel Proust)《追憶似水年華》(In Search of Lost Time)中蓋爾芒特女公爵(Duchess of Guermantes)的原型。

As to why … well, look to the clothes. Together the gowns are “about more than fashion,” Mr. Saillard said. “They are about a woman who built her own wardrobe to create an identity,” one that involved shaping not only the aesthetic tastes of her peers, but also their cultural and political values. The Comtesse de Greffulhe would “say to designers, ‘O.K., show me your whole collection — and now forget that, and do something else,’” Mr. Saillard said.

至於爲什麼……呃，看看那些衣服你就知道了。薩亞爾說，這些禮服“不僅是關於時尚，而且是關於一個用自己的衣櫥塑造身份的女人”，她不僅想塑造同齡人的審美品位，而且想塑造他們的文化和政治價值觀。薩亞爾說，格雷菲勒女伯爵會“對設計師們說，‘好的，給我看看你的整個系列——現在忘了這個系列，做點別的’”。

Pointedly, though the Comtesse de Greffulhe made sartorial waves almost a half-century before Jacqueline de Ribes, both exhibitions are marked by a palpable aesthetic consistency, a timelessness as opposed to a sense of trend, in part because their subjects dressed to please themselves, and to express themselves. Not to make an impact on mobile, or “pop” for the paparazzi.

雖然格雷菲勒女伯爵幾乎比傑奎琳·德里貝斯早半個世紀掀起服裝浪潮，但是這兩場展覽具有明顯的審美一致性。它們具有永恆感，而非潮流感，一個原因是這兩位女主人公選擇服裝的出發點是讓自己高興，是爲了表達自己，而不是爲了在網上產生影響力，也不是爲了“突然現身”讓狗仔隊拍照。

“These were dresses made not to be shown, but to be worn,” Mr. Saillard said of the de Greffulhe wardrobe. Which is not to say the dresses are subtle or retiring (they can be, by contrast, notably dramatic), merely that they are purposeful.

薩亞爾提到格雷菲勒的服裝時說：“這些衣服的製作目的是穿着而非展示。”他的意思不是說這些衣服保守過時（相反，有些非常引人注目），只是說它們具有目的性。

Indeed, though Mr. Koda acknowledged that he had thought of it as the story of the life of a woman of leisure, complete with furniture and art. But when the countess (who is 86), said: “That’s not what I was about. From the time I was a child I resisted being put into that box. I wanted to create.” Clothes were simply the vehicle and the expression.

的確，雖然科達承認，本來他把這看作一個關於富裕有閒階層女人的生活的故事。但是這位女伯爵（今年86歲）說：“我不是那樣的。我從小就拒絕被歸入那一類。我想創造。”衣服只是她的表達手段。

“I could see the gowns she had made in the 1980s as part of a sensibility she had been developing all her life,” Mr. Koda said.

科達說：“我可以把她在20世紀80年代製作的禮服看作她一生都在探索的一種感情的一部分。”

So there is, for example, a continuum between a shell pink sleeveless Guy Laroche evening column from 1962 with a fuchsia embroidered train (which also had a matching fuchsia embroidered coat, but the countess took the coat and combined it with assorted bits and pieces — short sable-trimmed sleeves and bouffant trousers made of tulle from a wholesale fabric seller — for a costume ball in 1969) and a shell pink one-shouldered Jacqueline de Ribes double-faced one-shoulder evening gown with an asymmetric ruffle framing the neck. And it is possible to see the same eye at work in a 1968 couture Yves Saint Laurent salmon jumpsuit with a cock feather ruff at the neck, and a black velvet Jacqueline de Ribes column with white spotted black feathers bristling around the throat from 1986.

所以，我們能從很多服裝中看到一種延續性。比如，蓋伊·拉羅什(Guy Laroche)1962年設計的帶有紫紅色刺繡裙裾的淺粉色無袖直筒晚禮服（它還有一個配套的紫紅色刺繡外衣，不過1969年，這位女伯爵用這件外套搭配各種小飾品——比如黑貂皮鑲邊短袖——以及用從面料批發商那裏買來的薄紗做成的寬大褲子，參加一個化裝舞會）和頸部裝飾着不對稱褶皺的淺粉色雙面植絨單肩傑奎琳·德里貝斯晚禮服。伊夫·聖羅蘭(Yves Saint Laurent)1968年設計的淺橙色公雞毛飛邊高級定製連衫褲與傑奎琳·德里貝斯1986年設計的白斑點黑羽毛豎領黑天鵝絨直筒連衣裙，也有相通之處。

“It requires a certain amount of discipline to say, ‘This is what’s good for me, this is who I am, and whatever trend is out there, I am only going to buy into to the extent I can use it to frame the best portrait of myself,’” Mr. Koda said. “This is all about the reality of a certain kind of life.”

科達說：“一個人需要一定的自律精神才能說出這樣的話：‘這是適合我的，這是我想要的。不管外面流行什麼，我只會購買能用來展示最好的自我的服裝’。這是某一種人生的本質。”

And though that kind of life, or both kinds of lives, may seem on the surface a relic of another age, the broader, more abstract lessons of each show — about choosing and thinking for yourself, about understanding the identity you create via clothes and the opportunities therein — are entirely contemporary. More timeless, even, than the dresses themselves.

雖然那種生活，或者說那兩種生活，似乎都存在於另一個時代的廢墟之上，但是我們從這兩場展覽中所得到的更寬泛抽象的教益與當代生活十分相關——爲自己而選擇和思考，通過服裝塑造身份、創造機會。這些教益甚至比那些服裝更具有永恆意義。