论文部分内容阅读
可可·香奈尔，原名加布里埃·香奈尔，曾被法国前文化部部长称为20世纪法国永垂不朽的3位名人之一。尽管她出身低微，童年不幸，性格不羁，可是凭着绝对的自信和敏锐的直觉，她最终成为了时尚王国无可争议的传奇女王。她，就是时尚的化身；她，让女人的生命怒放！
Coco Chanel wasn’t just ahead of her time, she was ahead of herself. If one looks at the work of contemporary fashion designers as different from one another as 1)Tom Ford, 2)Helmut Lang, 3)Miuccia Prada, 4)Jil Sander and 5)Donatella Versace, one sees that many of their strategies echo what Chanel once did. The way, 75 years ago, she mixed up the vocabulary of male and female clothes and created fashion that offered the wearer a feeling of hidden luxury rather than
6)ostentation are just two examples of how her taste and sense of style overlap with today’s fashion.
Chanel would not have defined herself as a feminist—in fact, she consistently spoke of femininity rather than of feminism—yet her work is unquestionably part of the liberation of women. She threw out a 7)life jacket, as it were, to women not once but twice, during two distinct periods decades apart: the 1920s and the ’50s. She not only 8)appropriated styles, fabrics and articles of clothing that were worn by men but also, beginning with how she dressed herself, appropriated sports clothes as part of the language of fashion. One can see how her style evolved out of necessity and 9)defiance. She couldn’t afford the fashionable clothes of the period—so she rejected them and made her own, using, say, the sports jackets and ties that were everyday male attire around the racetrack, where she was climbing her first social ladders.
By the late ’60s, Chanel had become part of what she once rebelled against and hated—the Establishment. But if one looks at documentary footage of her from that period, one can still feel the 10)spit and vinegar of the fiery peasant woman who began her fashion revolution against society by aiming at the head, with hats. Her boyish “11)flapper” creations were 12)in stark contrast to the 13)Belle Epoque 14)millinery that was in vogue at the time, and about which she asked, “How can a brain function under those things?” Something that Chanel can never be accused of is not using her brain. Her sharp mind is apparent in everything she did, from her savvy use of logos to her deep understanding of the power of personality and packaging, even the importance of being copied. And she was always quotable: “Fashion is not simply a matter of clothes. Fashion is in the air, born upon the wind. One 15)intuits it. It is in the sky and on the road.”
It is fitting, somehow, that Chanel was often photographed holding a cigarette or standing in front of her famous Art Deco wall of mirrors. Fashion tends to involve a good dose of 16)smoke and mirrors, so it should come as no surprise that Gabrielle Chanel’s version of her life involved a multitude of lies, 17)inventions, cover-ups and revisions. But as Prada said to me: “She was really a genius. It’s hard to pin down exactly why, but it has something to do with her wanting to be different and wanting to be independent.”
Certainly her life was unpredictable. Even her death—in 1971, at the age of 87 in her private quarters at the Ritz Hotel—was a 18)plush ending that probably would not have been predicted for Chanel by the nuns in the Aubazine orphanage, where she spent time as a ward of the state after her mother died and her father ran off. No doubt the sisters at the convent in Moulins, who took her in when she was 17, raised their eyebrows when the young woman left the 19)seamstress job they had helped her get to try for a career as a 20)cabaret singer. This stint as a performer led her to take up with the local swells and become the backup mistress of Etienne Balsan, a playboy who would finance her move to Paris and the opening of her first hat business. That arrangement gave way to a bigger and better deal when she moved on to his friend, Arthur (“Boy”) Capel, who is said to have been the love of her life and who backed her expansion from hats to clothes and from Paris to the coastal resorts of Deauville and Biarritz. One of her first successes was the loose-fitting sweater, which she belted and teamed with a skirt. These early victories were similar to the clothes she had been making for herself—women’s clothes made out of Everyman materials such as jersey, usually associated with men’s 21)undergarments.
Throughout the ’20s, Chanel’s social, sexual and professional progress continued, and her eminence grew to the status of legend. By the early ’30s she’d been courted by Hollywood, gone and come back. She had almost married one of the richest men in Europe, the Duke of Westminster; when she didn’t, her explanation was, “There have been several Duchesses of Westminster. There is only one Chanel.”
In fact, there were many Coco Chanels, just as her work had many phases and many styles, including Gypsy skirts, over-the-top fake jewelry and glittering evening wear—made of crystal and jet beads laid over black and white 22)georgette 23)crepe—not just the plainer jersey suits and “little black dresses” that made her famous. But probably the single element that most ensured Chanel’s being remembered, even when it would have been easier to 24)write her off, is not a piece of clothing but a form of liquid gold—Chanel No. 5, in its Art Deco bottle, which was launched in 1923. It was the first perfume to bear a designer’s name. By the time Katharine Hepburn played her on Broadway in 1969, Chanel had achieved first-name recognition and was simply Coco.
可可·香奈尔不仅仅只是领先于她的时代，她还领先于她自己。如果你看看当代那些时尚设计大师们的作品，例如汤姆·福德、海尔姆特·朗、缪西娅·普拉达、吉尔·桑达和唐娜泰拉·范思哲，尽管他们的作品风格各异，但是你仍能发现他们的许多理念都不过是在重复香奈尔曾经的策略。早在75年前，她就已经将男装和女装的元素相混合，并创造出了一种全新的时尚，令穿衣者体验到一种低调的奢华，而不是阔绰的炫耀——仅从这两方面我们就能看出，她当时对潮流的品位和感觉同今天的时尚是多么地
一致。
香奈尔从不认为她自己是名女权主义者——实际上，她总是在谈论女性特质而非女权主义——然而她的作品却无疑是女性解放运动中的一部分。在间隔数十年的两个非常时期，她曾不止一次而是两次向女性抛出了救生衣：一次在20世纪20年代，另一次在20世纪50年代。她不仅挪用了曾属于男装的风格、面料和款式，同时还用自己的着装打扮将运动装变成时尚语言的一部分。你能看出她的风格不单源自实用，同时也含反叛元素。因为买不起当时的流行服饰，于是她就反抗潮流，利用男士们日常在赛马场所穿戴的运动夹克和领带来创造自己的潮流，并以此向她的社会阶梯迈出了第一步。
到了20世纪60年代末期，香奈尔已经成为时尚主流阶层的一分子，而这一阶层却是她曾一度极其反抗和憎恨的。但是，如果你观看她当时录制的纪录片，你依然能感受到这位火爆的农家女孩的活力四射。她拿传统的帽子开刀，并由此发起了反抗社会的时尚革命。她所设计的略带男孩子气的“反传统式”作品与当时流行的“法国美好时光式”女帽截然不同，而对此她曾质问道：“一个人的脑袋在那种玩意儿下面该如何思考呢？”对于香奈尔来说，你决不能指责她没头脑。她所做过的一切事情无不彰显了她敏锐的思维——从她对商标的精明运用到她对个性和包装，甚至对被仿制的重要性的深刻认识中都能体现出来。而她也常常语出惊人，被人津津乐道：“时尚不仅仅与服饰有关。时尚就弥漫在空气中，随风而生。你可以凭直觉感觉到它的存在，它既飘浮在天际，也行走在路上。”
香奈尔在拍照时常常夹着一支烟，或者站在她那著名的装饰派艺术风格的镜墙前，不知怎的，这种感觉出奇地适合她。时尚总需要不少烟雾幻象来陪衬，所以加布里埃·香奈尔的生活充斥着谎言、虚构、掩饰和修正也不足为奇。不过普拉达曾对我说：“她真的是个天才。你很难说清原因，不过这可能与她想要与众不同、想要独立自主有关。”
当然，她的人生是变化难料的。即使是她的逝世——1971年87岁高龄时，在法国丽兹酒店她的私人套房中离世——也是极其舒适的，关于这点可能是那些在奥巴辛孤儿院收养过她的修女们想象不到的。当她母亲去世，父亲又离家出走时，她曾以国家受监护人的身份在那里长大。17岁时，她又被漠林市修道院收留。毫无疑问，当她放弃了她们帮她找到的藉以谋生的裁缝工作而转做一名夜总会歌手时，修女们都惊讶万分。然而这份表演工作却让她结识了不少当地的头面人物，后来她还成为了花花公子艾提安·巴勒松的情人之一。巴勒松愿意资助她搬去巴黎并开始她的第一笔帽子生意，可是他们的约定却让步于另一笔更大也更好的交易——她转投了他的朋友亚瑟·贾柏（绰号“男孩”）的怀抱。据说贾柏是她一生的挚爱，他一直资助她扩展事业，从帽子生意到服装生意，从巴黎到多维尔和比亚里茨的海滨度假胜地。她最初的杰作之一是宽松毛衣的设计，她将其束上腰带并与裙子相搭配。这些早期的成功之作与她为自己设计的衣服极为相似——以诸如平针织布之类的普通面料来制作女装，而这些面料通常是用来制作男士内衣的。
在整个20世纪20年代，香奈尔的社会地位、个人魅力和事业都蒸蒸日上，而她的传奇色彩也与日俱增。到了30年代早期，她往返于好莱坞，成为了那里的宠儿。她差一点就嫁给了欧洲最富有的人之一——威斯敏斯特公爵，可是她却没有。对此，她解释说：“威斯敏斯特公爵夫人有很多，而香奈尔只有一个。”
实际上，可可·香奈尔也有许多个，正如她的作品分为许多时期和许多风格一样，包括了吉普赛裙装、大量的仿真珠宝和华丽闪亮的晚礼服——在黑白色的乔其纱上覆盖水晶和黑玉珠串——而并非只有让她藉以成名的较为素淡的运动装和“黑色小礼服”。不过也许最让香奈尔被世人铭记的，或者在当时更容易将她的名声毁于一旦的，不是服装而是一种液体黄金——香奈尔五号。它于1923年问世，被盛装在极具装饰派艺术风格的瓶子中。它是世界上第一瓶以设计者的名字命名的香水。当1969年凯瑟琳·赫本在百老汇扮演她的时候，香奈尔已经赢得了广泛的认可——“可可”，仅此。
Coco Chanel wasn’t just ahead of her time, she was ahead of herself. If one looks at the work of contemporary fashion designers as different from one another as 1)Tom Ford, 2)Helmut Lang, 3)Miuccia Prada, 4)Jil Sander and 5)Donatella Versace, one sees that many of their strategies echo what Chanel once did. The way, 75 years ago, she mixed up the vocabulary of male and female clothes and created fashion that offered the wearer a feeling of hidden luxury rather than
6)ostentation are just two examples of how her taste and sense of style overlap with today’s fashion.
Chanel would not have defined herself as a feminist—in fact, she consistently spoke of femininity rather than of feminism—yet her work is unquestionably part of the liberation of women. She threw out a 7)life jacket, as it were, to women not once but twice, during two distinct periods decades apart: the 1920s and the ’50s. She not only 8)appropriated styles, fabrics and articles of clothing that were worn by men but also, beginning with how she dressed herself, appropriated sports clothes as part of the language of fashion. One can see how her style evolved out of necessity and 9)defiance. She couldn’t afford the fashionable clothes of the period—so she rejected them and made her own, using, say, the sports jackets and ties that were everyday male attire around the racetrack, where she was climbing her first social ladders.
By the late ’60s, Chanel had become part of what she once rebelled against and hated—the Establishment. But if one looks at documentary footage of her from that period, one can still feel the 10)spit and vinegar of the fiery peasant woman who began her fashion revolution against society by aiming at the head, with hats. Her boyish “11)flapper” creations were 12)in stark contrast to the 13)Belle Epoque 14)millinery that was in vogue at the time, and about which she asked, “How can a brain function under those things?” Something that Chanel can never be accused of is not using her brain. Her sharp mind is apparent in everything she did, from her savvy use of logos to her deep understanding of the power of personality and packaging, even the importance of being copied. And she was always quotable: “Fashion is not simply a matter of clothes. Fashion is in the air, born upon the wind. One 15)intuits it. It is in the sky and on the road.”
It is fitting, somehow, that Chanel was often photographed holding a cigarette or standing in front of her famous Art Deco wall of mirrors. Fashion tends to involve a good dose of 16)smoke and mirrors, so it should come as no surprise that Gabrielle Chanel’s version of her life involved a multitude of lies, 17)inventions, cover-ups and revisions. But as Prada said to me: “She was really a genius. It’s hard to pin down exactly why, but it has something to do with her wanting to be different and wanting to be independent.”
Certainly her life was unpredictable. Even her death—in 1971, at the age of 87 in her private quarters at the Ritz Hotel—was a 18)plush ending that probably would not have been predicted for Chanel by the nuns in the Aubazine orphanage, where she spent time as a ward of the state after her mother died and her father ran off. No doubt the sisters at the convent in Moulins, who took her in when she was 17, raised their eyebrows when the young woman left the 19)seamstress job they had helped her get to try for a career as a 20)cabaret singer. This stint as a performer led her to take up with the local swells and become the backup mistress of Etienne Balsan, a playboy who would finance her move to Paris and the opening of her first hat business. That arrangement gave way to a bigger and better deal when she moved on to his friend, Arthur (“Boy”) Capel, who is said to have been the love of her life and who backed her expansion from hats to clothes and from Paris to the coastal resorts of Deauville and Biarritz. One of her first successes was the loose-fitting sweater, which she belted and teamed with a skirt. These early victories were similar to the clothes she had been making for herself—women’s clothes made out of Everyman materials such as jersey, usually associated with men’s 21)undergarments.
Throughout the ’20s, Chanel’s social, sexual and professional progress continued, and her eminence grew to the status of legend. By the early ’30s she’d been courted by Hollywood, gone and come back. She had almost married one of the richest men in Europe, the Duke of Westminster; when she didn’t, her explanation was, “There have been several Duchesses of Westminster. There is only one Chanel.”
In fact, there were many Coco Chanels, just as her work had many phases and many styles, including Gypsy skirts, over-the-top fake jewelry and glittering evening wear—made of crystal and jet beads laid over black and white 22)georgette 23)crepe—not just the plainer jersey suits and “little black dresses” that made her famous. But probably the single element that most ensured Chanel’s being remembered, even when it would have been easier to 24)write her off, is not a piece of clothing but a form of liquid gold—Chanel No. 5, in its Art Deco bottle, which was launched in 1923. It was the first perfume to bear a designer’s name. By the time Katharine Hepburn played her on Broadway in 1969, Chanel had achieved first-name recognition and was simply Coco.
可可·香奈尔不仅仅只是领先于她的时代，她还领先于她自己。如果你看看当代那些时尚设计大师们的作品，例如汤姆·福德、海尔姆特·朗、缪西娅·普拉达、吉尔·桑达和唐娜泰拉·范思哲，尽管他们的作品风格各异，但是你仍能发现他们的许多理念都不过是在重复香奈尔曾经的策略。早在75年前，她就已经将男装和女装的元素相混合，并创造出了一种全新的时尚，令穿衣者体验到一种低调的奢华，而不是阔绰的炫耀——仅从这两方面我们就能看出，她当时对潮流的品位和感觉同今天的时尚是多么地
一致。
香奈尔从不认为她自己是名女权主义者——实际上，她总是在谈论女性特质而非女权主义——然而她的作品却无疑是女性解放运动中的一部分。在间隔数十年的两个非常时期，她曾不止一次而是两次向女性抛出了救生衣：一次在20世纪20年代，另一次在20世纪50年代。她不仅挪用了曾属于男装的风格、面料和款式，同时还用自己的着装打扮将运动装变成时尚语言的一部分。你能看出她的风格不单源自实用，同时也含反叛元素。因为买不起当时的流行服饰，于是她就反抗潮流，利用男士们日常在赛马场所穿戴的运动夹克和领带来创造自己的潮流，并以此向她的社会阶梯迈出了第一步。
到了20世纪60年代末期，香奈尔已经成为时尚主流阶层的一分子，而这一阶层却是她曾一度极其反抗和憎恨的。但是，如果你观看她当时录制的纪录片，你依然能感受到这位火爆的农家女孩的活力四射。她拿传统的帽子开刀，并由此发起了反抗社会的时尚革命。她所设计的略带男孩子气的“反传统式”作品与当时流行的“法国美好时光式”女帽截然不同，而对此她曾质问道：“一个人的脑袋在那种玩意儿下面该如何思考呢？”对于香奈尔来说，你决不能指责她没头脑。她所做过的一切事情无不彰显了她敏锐的思维——从她对商标的精明运用到她对个性和包装，甚至对被仿制的重要性的深刻认识中都能体现出来。而她也常常语出惊人，被人津津乐道：“时尚不仅仅与服饰有关。时尚就弥漫在空气中，随风而生。你可以凭直觉感觉到它的存在，它既飘浮在天际，也行走在路上。”
香奈尔在拍照时常常夹着一支烟，或者站在她那著名的装饰派艺术风格的镜墙前，不知怎的，这种感觉出奇地适合她。时尚总需要不少烟雾幻象来陪衬，所以加布里埃·香奈尔的生活充斥着谎言、虚构、掩饰和修正也不足为奇。不过普拉达曾对我说：“她真的是个天才。你很难说清原因，不过这可能与她想要与众不同、想要独立自主有关。”
当然，她的人生是变化难料的。即使是她的逝世——1971年87岁高龄时，在法国丽兹酒店她的私人套房中离世——也是极其舒适的，关于这点可能是那些在奥巴辛孤儿院收养过她的修女们想象不到的。当她母亲去世，父亲又离家出走时，她曾以国家受监护人的身份在那里长大。17岁时，她又被漠林市修道院收留。毫无疑问，当她放弃了她们帮她找到的藉以谋生的裁缝工作而转做一名夜总会歌手时，修女们都惊讶万分。然而这份表演工作却让她结识了不少当地的头面人物，后来她还成为了花花公子艾提安·巴勒松的情人之一。巴勒松愿意资助她搬去巴黎并开始她的第一笔帽子生意，可是他们的约定却让步于另一笔更大也更好的交易——她转投了他的朋友亚瑟·贾柏（绰号“男孩”）的怀抱。据说贾柏是她一生的挚爱，他一直资助她扩展事业，从帽子生意到服装生意，从巴黎到多维尔和比亚里茨的海滨度假胜地。她最初的杰作之一是宽松毛衣的设计，她将其束上腰带并与裙子相搭配。这些早期的成功之作与她为自己设计的衣服极为相似——以诸如平针织布之类的普通面料来制作女装，而这些面料通常是用来制作男士内衣的。
在整个20世纪20年代，香奈尔的社会地位、个人魅力和事业都蒸蒸日上，而她的传奇色彩也与日俱增。到了30年代早期，她往返于好莱坞，成为了那里的宠儿。她差一点就嫁给了欧洲最富有的人之一——威斯敏斯特公爵，可是她却没有。对此，她解释说：“威斯敏斯特公爵夫人有很多，而香奈尔只有一个。”
实际上，可可·香奈尔也有许多个，正如她的作品分为许多时期和许多风格一样，包括了吉普赛裙装、大量的仿真珠宝和华丽闪亮的晚礼服——在黑白色的乔其纱上覆盖水晶和黑玉珠串——而并非只有让她藉以成名的较为素淡的运动装和“黑色小礼服”。不过也许最让香奈尔被世人铭记的，或者在当时更容易将她的名声毁于一旦的，不是服装而是一种液体黄金——香奈尔五号。它于1923年问世，被盛装在极具装饰派艺术风格的瓶子中。它是世界上第一瓶以设计者的名字命名的香水。当1969年凯瑟琳·赫本在百老汇扮演她的时候，香奈尔已经赢得了广泛的认可——“可可”，仅此。