Women Are Defining Paris Couture
巴黎高定品牌，现在由女性主宰

PARIS — Something unexpected has happened at the Paris couture — the tippy tippy top of the European fashion pyramid and the beating heart of its identity. Steadily, quietly, seemingly overnight (though obviously not) it has become defined by women: not those to whom it caters, but those in charge.
巴黎——巴黎高定作为欧洲时尚金字塔的最顶端以及它跳动的心脏，发生了一件意想不到的事情。平和地、静悄悄地、仿佛就在一夜之间（尽管显然不是），它已被女性所定义：女人不仅仅是时装周所要迎合的对象，她们也成了执掌大权的人。

The three most famous French couture houses are now designed by women: at Chanel, Virginie Viard is artistic director; at Dior, Maria Grazia Chiuri; and at Givenchy, Clare Waight Keller. Meanwhile, the most singular newgen brand on the schedule, Iris van Herpen, is (duh) run by its namesake. That may not sound like a lot, but in a contracting discipline it means the balance of the power of influence is in their hands. Like what they do or not — and the results were mixed — there is no question, as the shows got underway, that a troika dominated the conversation.
法国最著名的三大时装公司现在都由女设计师担纲：维尔吉尼·维亚德（Virginie Viard）在香奈儿（Chanel）担任艺术总监；迪奥(Dior)的艺术总监是玛丽亚·格拉齐亚·基乌里（Maria Grazia Chiuri）；纪梵希（Givenchy）则是克莱尔·维特·凯勒（Clare Waight Keller）。与此同时，当前最独特的新一代品牌艾莉丝·范·赫本（Iris van Herpen）则由她本人运营（哈）。听起来可能不多，但是根据合同约束，这意味着影响力的平衡掌握在她们手中。无论她们做什么、不做什么——其结果是好坏参半——毫无疑问，随着走秀继续进行，女性的三驾马车主导了对话。

And that, in itself, is a step forward.
而这本身就是向前迈出的一步。

On Monday night, Marlène Schiappa, the French minister of state for gender equality, presented the Légion d’honneur to Ms. Chiuri. In front of a crowd that included Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Bianca Jagger and a host of cheering LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton executives, Ms. Schiappa put it this way: "You proved to all women you could change things by doing it yourself."
周一晚上，法国负责性别平等的国务秘书马莱娜·夏帕（Marlène Schiappa）向基乌里颁发了荣誉军团勋章。观礼者包括希玛曼达·恩戈齐·阿迪奇（Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie）、比安卡·贾格尔（Bianca Jagger）和一群欢呼雀跃的LVMH酩悦轩尼诗-路易威登（LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton）高管，夏帕是这样说的：“你向所有女性证明，你可以通过自己的努力改变一些事情。”

Then she applauded Ms. Chiuri's work to recast Dior as a feminist brand (heavy-handed though the messaging can be). This happened a few hours after a Dior show in which Ms. Chiuri focused on clothes as the "first space in which you define yourself," and couture as the ultimate in personalization.
然后，她称赞了基乌里将迪奥重塑为一个女权主义品牌的努力（尽管传达的信息可能很强硬）。这件事发生在迪奥时装秀的几个小时之后，在这场秀上，基乌里把时装作为“你定义自己的第一个空间”，而高级定制时装则是个性化的终极体现。

That she did so with a collection that was almost entirely in black was both a declaration of self — "black is a very personal color to me," she said backstage before the show, wearing a black kimono, a black shirt and pants highlighting the details in pieces straight from her Dior vernacular. But look closer at the Bar jackets, spaghetti-strap party gowns and small-shoulder tailored coats, and note the sheer point d'esprit undershirts beneath the corsetry, the feathered fishnet shoes climbing to the thighs under a puff skirt, the elegant drape of a coat secured on a hip. And remember: When clients order the clothes, they can choose the colors.
她用一个几乎完全是黑色的系列呈现这一点，它们是一种自我宣言——“对我来说，黑色是非常私人的颜色”，走秀之前，她在后台说，身穿黑色和服、黑色衬衫和裤子，局部细节直接来自她的迪奥设计语汇。但是仔细看看走秀上那些束腰夹克、意面系带派对礼服和窄肩剪裁的外套，注意紧身胸衣下面那件极具精神气质的背心、蓬松裙下装饰着羽毛的过膝渔网鞋，以及系在臀部的外套上的优雅褶边。记住：当客户订购衣服时，她们可以选择不同颜色。

In this, the show was less overtly activist than some of Ms Chiuri's other collections. Though she has made something of a specialty of the slogan tee, starting with her first "We Should All be Feminists" collection, the only writing this time around belonged to Bernard Rudofsky and a question he raised in 1944 in MoMA's first fashion exhibition: "Are Clothes Modern?"
在这点上，与基乌里的其他一些系列相比，这场走秀没有那么鲜明的激进色彩。从她的第一个系列“我们都应该成为女权主义者”开始，她的口号T恤一直都很有特色，但是这一次，走秀上唯一的文字来自伯纳德·鲁多夫斯基(Bernard Rudofsky)在1944年MoMA举办的第一次时装展上提出的一个问题：“服装是现代的吗？”

(To be fair, Ms. Chiuri did frame the show with an installation by the feminist artist Penny Slinger, which transformed the Dior headquarters on Avenue Montaigne into an eerie watery habitat through which goddesses blinked and an ancient tree twined, so she hadn't entirely eschewed her theme.)
（公平地说，基乌里确实用了女权主义艺术家彭妮·斯林格[Penny Slinger]的一件装置艺术来装饰这场走秀。它将迪奥位于蒙田大道的总部变成了一个怪异的水乡，女神们到处挤眉弄眼，一棵古树枝干缠绕，所以她并没有完全回避自己的主题。）

Ms. Chiuri didn't answer the question, exactly, and her relentless procession of princess dresses, her iteration after iteration of nipped-in waists and molded hips, can seem stuck paying allegiance to another era (the silvery twists in an armor-like lamé column, on the other hand, had a resolutely contemporary cast). But in her insistence on a woman's right to choose — what goes on her body as well as everything else — the designer is very much of her moment.
基乌里没有确切地回答这个问题，她没完没了地推出公主裙，一而再、再而三地推出收腰和掐臀的造型，这似乎是对另一个时代的忠诚（另一方面，一条盔甲般的金银线绣塔裙上的银色曲线，有着坚定的当代元素）。但她坚持女性有权选择自己的身体和其他一切，这位设计师是她所处的环境塑造的。

Just as Ms. Viard, the former right hand of Karl Lagerfeld who has been charged with carrying on his legacy at Chanel, seemed in her debut solo couture show to be edging the house ever so slightly into a new era: One a little more focused on who wears the pants.
正如卡尔·拉格斐(Karl Lagerfeld)曾经的得力助手维尔吉尼·维亚德（她被委以重任，在香奈儿延续他的传奇）在她的首个高定秀所表现的那样，她似乎把这个品牌缓缓带入了一个新的时代：一个略微更关注家里谁“穿裤子”（也有做主的意思——译注）的时代。

Literally. Pants (cut loose and long in tweed bouclé, mousseline and silk satin, paired with neat jackets or cast as a jumpsuit) dominated the collection. Worn largely with patent loafers or white and black bow-bedecked spectator flats, sometimes generously pleated, sometimes palazzo, once even in the form of sheer skinny knickerbockers (ahem, maybe not) they made for easy walking, even into the most formal of events. See, for example, a lovely white tank feathered in chiffon, atop tiered plissé black trousers, or the shell-pink pajamas with a matching tucked and tufted kimono worn by her bride.
就是字面意思。裤装（宽松、长款剪裁，粗花呢、真丝薄稠、绸缎面料，搭配整洁的夹克或做成连体衣）主导了整个系列。大多与漆皮乐福鞋或黑白蝴蝶结撞色平底鞋穿搭，有时打上宽大的褶裥，有时是阔腿裤，有一次甚至以极瘦灯笼裤的形式出现（好吧，也许不是），它们很方便行走，即使是步入最正式的场合。比如你可以看到，一件白色羽状雪纺背心，下面是层列式黑绉缎长裤，或贝壳粉睡衣，搭配她的新娘穿着的褶皱和簇绒和服式外套。

It was a subtle but insistent shift, shown in a set that recreated a library in the round, shelves lined with faux vintage volumes of Stendhal, Flaubert and Rousseau, the whole fully in line with the Lagerfeld tradition of elaborate stage craft (Mr. Lagerfeld's famous scrawl itself was hidden amid the sequined embroidery on a minidress). And it was embedded in a collection otherwise largely familiar (and full of comfortable continuity): long bouclé coats lined by rows of diamanté and pearl buttons; miniskirts and sparkly cocktail dresses paired with cropped puff-shoulder bomber jackets; high-collar white shirts and tuxedo bib velvets; an evening section of simple silver screen-era silks and satin slithers. Still, it was notable.
这是个微妙而坚决的转变，秀场的背景完全再现了一个图书馆，书架上排列着仿古董的司汤达、福楼拜和卢梭的作品，整体上完全符合拉格菲的精致舞台艺术传统（拉格菲著名的涂鸦本身是隐藏在超短连衣裙上的亮片刺绣）。它被嵌入一个在其他方面基本上都很熟悉的系列（而且是充满舒适的连续性）：镶有钻石和珍珠纽扣的长款结子线织物外套；迷你裙和闪亮的鸡尾酒裙搭配短款蓬松肩短夹克；高领白衬衫搭配燕尾服围兜天鹅绒；简洁的银幕时代绸缎长裙晚装。虽然如此，但依然引人注意。

Because if there were less creative fireworks in Ms. Viard's work than Mr. Lagerfeld's, and there were, there was also less fuss. These days, there is more than enough of that elsewhere.
因为如果维亚德的作品中没有拉格菲那么多的创意噱头，就是这样，而且也没有那么多的铺陈。如今，这个在其他地方已经足够多了。

As for Ms. van Herpen, she has carved her own sui generis path, one marked by a conceptual attitude that combines traditional handwork with technology, so that universal subject matter — nature, the body, power — and classic fabrics (duchess satin, organza, cotton, tulle) are treated with entirely forward-looking techniques: laser printing and cutting, heat bonding, and the occasional piece of metal. It makes for a mesmerizing result, and not just because this time she centered her show around a kinetic sculpture titled "Omniverse" by the artist Anthony Howe that gracefully twisted and torqued in its own natural ballet throughout her presentation — but because her clothes do the same thing.
至于范·赫本，她已经开辟出自己独树一帜的道路，其标志是一种将传统手工与技术相结合的观念态度，以便自然、身体、力量这样的普遍主题和经典面料（公爵缎、欧根纱、棉布、薄纱）可以用完全前瞻性的技术进行处理：激光打印和切割、热粘合和偶尔出现一块金属。这带来一种迷人的结果，不仅因为这次她的展览围绕艺术家安东尼·豪伊(Anthony Howe)的动态雕塑《全能宇宙》(Omniverse)展开——在整个展示过程中，这个雕塑优雅地扭曲、转动，跳着自然之舞——还因为她的服装也在做同样的事情。

They may be based on mathematical formulas and scientific precision, and explained in impenetrable language that lauds "the hypnotic manifolds within our ecologies." But in practice they undulate around the body like sound waves given shape, or layers of geologic time; float from shoulders in wings of plissé; and shimmer with vague suggestions of the past — doesn’t that shape look a little Renaissance, that one a bit 19th-century? — and future.
它们可能基于数学公式和精密科技，并以令人费解的语言加以阐释，赞美“我们生态系统中的催眠流形”。但实际上，它们在身体周围波动起伏，像给定形状的声波或地质年代层；从肩上飘起绉布翅膀；闪烁着对过去——那个形状是不是有点文艺复兴的味道，那个又有点19世纪的味道？——以及未来的模糊暗示。

We tend to get distracted, when discussing couture, by the cost of the clothes, and the petites mains and their time-honored skills, and whether we think it is good or bad or frivolous or historic.
谈论高级定制时装时，我们往往容易分心，去留意服装的成本、细致的手法和久负盛名的技艺，以及我们是否认为它是好是坏，是轻率还是有年代感。

But it's worth taking a moment to consider what an enormous shift these women represent — and from what might have been seen as the most unlikely place. Couture, after all, is traditionally considered the most hidebound part of an industry latterly famous for being built on the practice of men dictating to women how they should look. Not any more. Not now.
但有必要花点时间思考一下，这些女性所代表的巨大转变——它出自一个一直被认为最不可能的领域。毕竟，在一个近来建立在男性主宰女性着装形象之上而闻名的行业，高级定制时装在传统上被认为是其中最保守的部分。不再如此了。至少现在。

Now it's either an anomaly, or a harbinger.
现在它或者是一种异常，或者是一种预示。