日本服装设计鬼才三宅一生 | 经济学人讣告

1

Most fascinating, to him, was the way clothes worked with the human body and the space that lay between fabric and living skin. His clothes were not finished until they were being worn, lived and moved in, just as music was unfinished until it was played. Even his Bao Bao bags, wildly popular constructions of polyvinyl triangles on a hard mesh, changed shape as they were filled and adjusted themselves to the wearer. He moulded his fabrics to bodies in ways that looked hard and sculptural but were flexible and soft, making customers feel cocooned and courageous both at once. As a child he had wanted to be an athlete or a dancer, and on the catwalks of Paris and New York models sometimes danced in his clothes, to reinforce the point.

In Paris, witnessing the student revolt of 1968, he decided that his clothes should be not just for the upper bourgeoisie, but for everyone. (His prices were not exactly mass-market, but reasonable for haute couture.) That principle also lay behind “A Piece of Cloth” (a-poc), a computer-controlled process that produced tubular pieces of polyester jersey, woven from a single thread, which each customer could cut into their own seamless clothes. In 1999 his models launched the idea by parading in one continuous piece of red cloth, each robed slightly differently but all swathed together, like the ribs of a fan.

在巴黎，他目睹了1968年爆发的冲突，决定自己的衣服不能只为上层阶级所有，人人都应该穿得起（虽说他的衣服价格并不完全符合大众市场，但对于高级定制服来说还算合理）。他的旗下品牌“一块布”（a-poc）也承接了这一理念：该品牌使用一种计算机控制的流程，利用单线头编织生产筒状涤纶衣物，每个客户可以根据自己的需求裁剪出属于自己的无缝布衣服。1999年，他的模特凭借一块连续不断的红布展示了他的设计理念，每一位模特身穿的袍子都略有不同，却相互缠绕在一起，就如一排排扇骨。

The first pieces ofa-poc were produced on a disused machine that had once made fishing nets. Though he claimed to know nothing about machines, such chance discoveries delighted him. An older process could be used to realise a futuristic idea, technology as much as art. While tradition inspired him, optimism and nagging dissatisfaction drove him on, towards a time when gender in clothes could be forgotten, anyone could wear anything (as men could, and did, wear his pleats), recycled fabric became the norm, and pattern-makers, sweatshops and middlemen disappeared from the world of fashion.

“一块布”最早的一批产品诞生于一台曾用于制作渔网的废弃机器。尽管声称自己不了解机器，但这一偶然发现还是让三宅欣喜不已：可以利用相对古老的工艺实现前卫的想法，这就是技术和艺术的平等交融。传统给了他启发，但乐观和永不满足的心态却驱使他不断前行，走向服装可以不分性别的时代，让任何人都能穿任何衣服（男性不仅可以，而且确实穿上了他的三宅褶皱），让使用回收面料成为常态，让样板师、血汗工厂和中间商从时尚世界消失。

His fixation on the future also had a deeper cause. In August 1945, at the age of seven, he saw the blinding red flash of the atomic bomb exploding over his city, Hiroshima, and the black rain that followed. He was just going back to class after morning assembly; instead he had to run home, desperate to find his mother among the crowds of panicking and burning people. She had survived, but was so badly burned that she died three years later. He himself was soon lamed by osteomyelitis, a disease caused by radiation. Among the striding and dancing models in his free and easy creations he walked with a broad smile, and with a limp.

三宅之所以执着于未来，背后也有更深层的原因。1945年8月，时年7岁的三宅目睹了家乡广岛上空原子弹爆炸产生的刺眼红光，也亲身经历了之后从天上降下的黑色雨水。当时他刚刚在学校出完早操，正在回教室的路上，结果却连忙往家的方向跑去，在浑身起火、惊恐万状的人群中心急火燎地寻找母亲的身影。母亲最后保住了性命，却遭受严重烧伤，三年后就不幸去世；而三宅自己也患上了辐射导致的骨感染症，很快便成了瘸子。大步流星、翩翩起舞的模特身穿他制作的艺术品，自由、轻巧，他一瘸一拐地迈着双腿，走在模特中间，笑容灿烂。

This story lay hidden until 2009. He did not want to be known as the designer who had survived Hiroshima. The focus had to be shifted away from destruction, towards creation; away from shadows, to the light. As a young man struggling to survive in the blasted city, he had taken up painting, using his fingers because he could not afford brushes. On his way to classes he would pass the city’s twin Peace bridges, East and West. The designer Noguchi Isamu, who later became his friend, had built concrete balustrades for them. Those on the West bridge (“To die, to depart”), ended with a broken flower-stalk plunging into the ground. Those on the East (“To live, to build”) ended with flowers growing, lifting their heads to the dawning sun. Live, build. Make things.

这段往事直到2009年才为世人所知。他不希望自己在人们的眼里是一个从广岛核爆当中幸存下来的设计师。他要将人们的关注点从毁灭和阴暗转向创造和光明。年轻时，他在遭受过核爆的家乡挣扎求生，因为买不起画笔，开始的时候便用自己的手指画画。上学路上，他会经过广岛城内的和平东桥和和平西桥。设计师野口勇为这两座桥设计了混凝土栏杆，三宅后来也和野口成了朋友。西桥上的栏杆（名为“死亡，离去”）末端造型为一根朝地下坠去的断裂花茎，而东桥上的栏杆（名为“生存，建设”）尽头则是一丛迎着朝阳徐徐绽放的花朵。要生存，要建设，要创造。