时装界 “朋克之母” 薇薇安·韦斯特伍德 | 经济学人讣告

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英文部分选自经济学人20230114期讣告

Vivienne Westwood

薇薇安·韦斯特伍德

Breaking, making

敢破敢立

Vivienne Westwood, designer and iconoclast, 29th, aged 81

薇薇安·韦斯特伍德，一位不墨守成规的设计师，于2022年12月29日逝世，享年81岁

Number 430 king’s road, where London’s Chelsea swerves towards Fulham, was a shop you entered in the 1970s only if you dared. The couple who ran it, Vivienne Westwood and her on-off partner Malcolm McLaren, liked it that way. Shocks to the system were their stock in trade. Any system, more or less.

20世纪70年代，在伦敦切尔西区与富勒姆区交界的国王路430号有一家商店，只有胆量足够大的人才敢踏足。经营这家店的老板是一对恋人：薇薇安·韦斯特伍德和她分分合合的伴侣马尔科姆·麦克拉伦（Malcolm McLaren），两人都喜欢这种风格。震撼固有体系是他们的一贯风格——他们想震撼所有的体系。

First the shop had catered to Teddy Boys, then to Rockers. In 1974 it became sex, with frightening staff who might greet you with a middle finger or a parade of naked rumps. By 1977 it was Seditionaries, a punk shop. More than that, it was the centre of punk’s empire. McLaren had recruited punk’s premier band, the Sex Pistols, who paraded their nastiness on stage by swearing, spitting, reviling the status quo and breaking things. Vivienne, who had appeared in sex in a see-through rubber negligee, was in charge of their look, and the shop stocked it: ripped shirts and bondage trousers, held together with chains and safety pins. She created the logo too, a brash red A for Anarchy in a crude red circle. It all shouted the glamour of nihilistic destruction.

起初，这家店主要面向泰迪男孩，后来转向摇滚发烧友。1974年，店铺更名为“Sex”，店员会对顾客竖起中指或裸露臀部，把人吓一跳。1977年，商店再次更名为“Seditionaries”，走朋克路线。不仅如此，这家店还是朋克帝国的中心。麦克拉伦聘请了大名鼎鼎的朋克乐队“性手枪乐队”（Sex Pistols），他们在舞台上口吐芬芳、唾沫横飞、愤世嫉俗、打砸物品，来展示他们有多污秽。薇薇安负责乐队成员的造型设计，在店铺还叫“sex”的时候，她就曾经身着透视橡胶睡衣出现在店里。而她的店铺里也铺满了带有造型元素设计的服饰：用链子和安全别针固定在一起的破洞衬衫和紧身裤。薇薇安还设计了自己（店铺）的logo：粗糙的红色圆圈环绕着一个扎眼的红色A字。A是英文“无政府主义”的首字母，彰显虚无主义毁灭力的魅力。

Back in her dingy Clapham flat, the mood was different. Here she produced much of the stock, labouring with her sewing machine, or dyeing stuff in the bath, to turn bulk-buy t-shirts and leather jackets into garments that were unique. When she designed the ripped shirts she cut them with a couturier’s care. The fabric had to have a dynamic drape, and the edge had to look good ragged. She was a craftswoman. What she created had to be the best.

回到克拉帕姆区昏暗的公寓后，她的心境就迥然不同。店里卖的大部分的货品都是在这里制作的：她用缝纫机缝衣服，在浴缸里给衣服染色，那些大批量购入的T恤和皮夹克摇身一变成了独具一格的服饰。她设计的所有破洞衫都是她细心裁剪的。面料必须有动态的垂感，而破洞的边缘必须粗糙得恰到好处。她是一名女匠人，经她手创造的东西必须是最好的。

Making and mending had been dinned in by her factory-worker parents in Derbyshire. She had watched her mother turn out clothes on a treadle machine, and learned how to darn. Sewing and jewellery-making, which she studied, might just about provide a living if she worked hard. Though she was crowned Queen of Punk by the press, her true slogan was never “I wanna be anarchy”. She was too keen on a fine cut and the feel of conservative fabric, like worsted or Harris Tweed. She was also too dedicated. Her favourite motto was one well-suited to her dry northern tones: “You get out what you put in.”

她的父母在德比郡的工厂里工作，一辈子都在制造和修理东西，对她产生了很大的影响。她看着母亲踩缝纫机做衣服，也学会了缝补衣服。靠她学到的缝纫和珠宝加工的手艺再努力可能也只够维持生计。虽然被媒体封为朋克女王，但她真正的信条从来不是“我是无政府主义者”。她醉心于精细的剪裁和传统面料的触感，比如精纺或哈里斯毛呢特有的手感。同时她也极为敬业。她最爱的座右铭也和她英国北方口音的调调相称：“付出多少就收获多少”。

What she put into fashion as the business grew was a mind ablaze with ideas. Most of them were joyously contrarian. When punk’s brief energy fizzled out she turned to heroes and renegades instead, putting the models in her first show in 1981 into pirate boots, billowy trousers and bicorne hats. When fashion went lean and minimalist, at the start of the 1990s, she produced embroidered mini-crinolines, frills and flounces, impossibly high platform shoes (Naomi Campbell fell over in hers) and plastic corsets carrying yards of train. An artist friend, Gary Ness, encouraged her to discover 19th-century France, 17th-century Dutch painting, Russian ballet and Chinese art. She would seize on motifs she saw—such as the slashed-silk clothing of Renaissance soldiers—and boldly use them on viscose or denim.

随着事业蓬勃发展，她为时尚界注入了众多的奇思妙想，这些想法大都叛逆又令人愉悦。朋克短暂风潮逝去后，她便转向了英雄和叛逆者风格，在1981年的首场专场时装秀上让模特穿上了海盗靴、波浪裤和拿破仑帽。1990年初，时尚的风向转向枯瘦和极简主义，她就推出了带刺绣的迷你衬裙、各种褶边和荷叶边的设计、恨天高的厚底鞋（英国模特娜奥米·坎贝尔就穿着她的鞋子摔倒了）和带着大裙摆的塑料塑身衣。受到艺术家朋友加里·内斯的鼓舞，她开始探索19世纪的法国、17世纪的荷兰绘画、俄罗斯芭蕾和中国艺术。她会把看到的样式捕捉下来（比如文艺复兴时期士兵的镂空丝绸服装），然后大胆地用人造丝或者牛仔布复制这些样式。

All through she played with gender, putting women in heavy-shouldered suits and men in lovely kilts and skirts. The public mockery didn't faze her at all. Those suits made women look important, and there was nothing sexier than that. (Except, perhaps, her phallic key-rings and her t-shirts of Mickey and Minnie Mouse making out.) Some looks misfired, but she produced them so fast that it hardly mattered. She seemed to know better than the young themselves what they were really craving.

自始至终，她都在性别概念上做文章，为女人披上高垫肩西装，让男人套上可爱的褶子裙和短裙。面对大众的嘲笑，她不为所动。她设计的西装让女人看起来有分量，没有什么比这更性感的了（也许只有男性生殖器造型的钥匙圈和印着米奇和米妮爱爱的T恤才能在性感程度上与之抗衡）。虽然有些设计并不那么成功，但是她推陈出新的速度实在太快了，让这些小失误根本无关紧要。她似乎比年轻人更了解他们内心真正的渴望。

Running a business was harder. Early on, she had two sons to bring up; she was sometimes broke and always too busy. But she was reluctant to scale up or send out the work, unless she could find craftspeople good enough. Friends kept her afloat while the enterprise was small. After that, as it grew into an international brand, her main helper and co-designer became her second husband Andreas Kronthaler. He was much younger, her best student when she taught fashion briefly at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, but they thought exactly alike. With him in charge she could focus on what she really wanted to do: change the world.

相比做设计，运营品牌更为困难。早些时候，她要抚养两个儿子，她有时穷困潦倒，总是忙的飞起。她不愿意扩大规模，也不愿意把工作外包出去，除非是找到了足够好的工人。公司规模还小的时候，她靠朋友的接济维持生计。之后，随着公司成长为国际品牌，她的左膀右臂、也是共同参与设计的伙伴安德里亚斯·科隆撒尔（Andreas Kronthaler）就成了她的第二任丈夫。她曾在维也纳应用艺术大学短期担任时尚设计教师，而科隆撒尔是她最好的学生。二人的年龄相距甚远，但思想却非常一致。科隆撒尔负责协调管理，而她就可以专注于自己真正想做的事情上：那就是改变世界。

She was against pretty much everything. War of course, capitalism, nuclear power, inequality, poverty, austerity, global warming. The world as it was. Her plan to save it—for she had to rebuild as well as knock down—was to stop war, establish that land belonged to no one, give up cars and be altruistic. Simple.

她几乎是为反对而生；战争自然躲不过她的批判，资本主义、核能、不平等、贫穷、财政紧缩、全球变暖等几乎一切事物都不例外。旧世界就是这样。她拯救世界的计划是先破后立，停止战争，建立一片无主之地，人人放弃汽车，人人利他无私。就这么简单。

In this battling scenario, fashion was a baddie. The high street was clearly to blame for piles of cheap clothes that people wore once, then threw away. Even she had several rails of clothes she no longer had a use for. Reduce, reuse, recycle was her mantra now. She made her plea on video, not forgetting to flaunt her breasts in a t-shirt emblazoned with the words “buy less”. Looking great could at least get a message noticed. In 2015 she wore a sharply tailored jacket to drive a white tank up to David Cameron’s home in Oxfordshire to show what she thought of fracking.

在这场斗争中，时尚就是其中一个反派。穿了一次就扔掉的廉价衣物堆积成山，高街风格的快时尚显然难辞其咎。即便如她也会有好几柜不会再穿的衣服。减少购买、重复使用、循环利用成了她现在的口头禅。她在视频里穿上印着“少买”字样的T恤，大声疾呼，但也没有忘了借机突出自己的胸部。打扮得好看至少能让信息得到注意。2015年，她穿着剪裁贴身的外套，开着白色坦克抵达大卫-卡梅伦在牛津郡的家，表明她对压裂工程的看法。（此处应该有掌聲）

The true role of fashion, though, went deeper than that. Proper couture like hers was too costly to be consumerist. It was about the fit of clothes to the body, ideally so perfect that it enhanced the experience of life. It was also about fabric that lasted and became a treasure. In 2011, between her campaigning, she was looking for a type of gold ribbon that could be woven with formalised eagles, like a medieval sample she had seen in a book. She could use it as a motif on a sweater, perhaps in some loose-woven fabric in a neutral shade. The contrast would be stark, timeless beauty seen in a new way. Did all ideas come from the young? No! She overturned the world of fashion by cherishing the masters of the past.

不过，时尚的真正作用却比这些更加深刻。像她设计的高级定制时装过于昂贵，消费者难以负担。时尚关乎衣物与身体的契合，完美之时，就提高了生活质量。时尚也关乎经久不衰的面料，这种面料还可以成为一种财富。2011年，她在活动间隙寻找一种金丝带，可以织出那种中世纪的老鹰图案，该图案她在书上看过。这一图案可以用在毛衣上，也可以用在中性色调的松散织物上，对比鲜明，以一种新的方式呈现永恒的美。难道所有的想法都是年轻一代的特权吗？绝对不是！她将历史上的大师视若珍宝，颠覆了整个时尚界。

In old age she combined completely the roles of wise ancient and fist-waving revolutionary. Her make-up was impeccable, just crayoned with red or blue as she saw fit. Her hair had subsided from fiery to white and her clothes were elegant—until she hitched them up to show bare thighs above black lace socks. The harder she fought against the establishment, the closer it embraced her. In 1992 she became an obe, in 2006 a dame. On both occasions she went to the Palace in her finest tailoring, and with no knickers on.

步入晚年，智慧的古人和挥舞拳头的革命者这两个角色在她身上完全融合了。她的妆容无可挑剔，只有在自认为合适的时候才会涂上红色或蓝色，曾经一头红色的秀发也变得花白。她穿着优雅，但撩起衣服时却露出一双穿着黑色蕾丝袜的大腿。她越是与体制斗争，体制就越是拥护她。1992年，女王为她颁发了勋章；2006年，她受封成为女爵。两次觐见女王时，她都穿着最好的衣服，虽然没有穿内裤。

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