香奈儿“老佛爷”去世：他塑造了现代奢侈时尚产业

2月19日，香奈儿艺术总监“老佛爷”去世，享年85岁。

香奈儿“老佛爷”去世：他塑造了现代奢侈时尚产业

Karl Lagerfeld, Designer Who Defined Luxury Fashion, Dies at 85

Karl Lagerfeld, the most prolific designer of the 20th and 21st centuries and a man whose career formed the prototype of the modern luxury fashion industry, has died. He was 85.

20和21世纪创作成就最为卓著、在职业生涯中塑造了现代奢侈时尚产业原型的设计师卡尔·拉格斐(Karl Lagerfeld)去世，享年85岁。

His death was announced on Tuesday by Chanel.

香奈儿(Chanel)于周二宣布了他的死讯。

“More than anyone I know, he represents the soul of fashion: restless, forward-looking and voraciously attentive to our changing culture,” Anna Wintour, editor of American Vogue, said of Mr. Lagerfeld when presenting him with the Outstanding Achievement Award at the British Fashion Awards in 2015.

“他比我认识的任何人都更能代表时尚的灵魂：永不止步，目光向前，如饥似渴地关注着我们不断变化的文化，”《Vogue》杂志美国版主编安娜·温图尔(Anna Wintour)在2015年英国时尚大奖(British fashion Awards)颁奖礼上这样评价拉格斐。

voracious

表示“渴求的，求知欲极强的”，英文解释为“having an extremely strong desire to do or have a lot of something”如：a voracious reader 一个如饥似渴的读者。

Creative director of Chanel since 1983 and Fendi since 1965, and founder of his own line, Mr. Lagerfeld was the definition of a fashion polyglot, able to speak the language of many different brands at the same time (not to mention many languages themselves: he read in English, French, German and Italian).

拉格斐从1983年起担任香奈儿的创意总监，从1965年起担任芬迪(Fendi)的创意总监，还创立了自己的品牌，他一直是时尚多语者的代名词，可以同时用多个不同品牌的语汇表达（更不用说对语言本身了：他能阅读英语、法语、德语和意大利语）。

polyglot

polyglot /ˈpɒlɪˌɡlɒt/ 表示“通晓数种语言的人”，英文解释为“A polyglot is a person who speaks or understands many languages.”

In his 80s, when most of his peers were retiring to their yachts or country estates, he was designing an average of 14 new collections a year ranging from couture to the high street, and not counting collaborations and special projects. His signature combinations of “high fashion and high camp” attracted Rihanna; Princess Caroline of Monaco; Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund; and Julianne Moore.

他的同龄人大都已经退休，在游艇上或乡间别墅里打发时间，他却在耄耋之年依旧平均每年设计从高级定制时装到高街产品的14个新系列，这还不包括合作和特别项目。他对“高端时尚和高端坎普”的结合已经成为个人标志，吸引了蕾哈娜(Rihanna)、摩纳哥卡罗琳公主(Princess Caroline of Monaco)、国际货币基金组织(IMF)总裁克里斯蒂娜·拉加德(Christine Lagarde)和朱丽安·摩尔(Julianne Moore)等人。

couture

表示“高级时装设计制作；高级时装”，英文解释为“Couture is the designing and making of expensive fashionable clothes, or the clothes themselves.”

高街？

高街品牌最早是指那些英国主要商业街的商店、仿造T型台时尚秀上所展示的时装，迅速制作为成品销售、让人人都能买到的品牌。（百度百科）

而英文中的high street表示“（位于重要商业区的）大街，商业街”，英文解释为“a street where the most important ashops and businesses in a town are”，举个🌰：

A new bookshop had opened in the high street.

大街上开了一家新书店。

而the high street可表示“商业买卖，商业活动，生意”（used to talk about shops and the money people spend in them；business done in shops），举个🌰：

There are signs of economic recovery in the high street.

商业方面有经济复苏的迹象。

This year was exceptionally difficult on the high street.

今年商店生意特别难做。

“Ideas come to you when you work,” he said backstage before a Fendi show at age 83. As a result, Mr. Lagerfeld never stopped creating. He was also a photographer, whose work was exhibited at the Pinacothèque de Paris; a publisher, having founded his own imprint for Steidl, Edition 7L; and the author of a popular 2002 diet book, “The Karl Lagerfeld Diet,” about how he had lost 92 pounds.

“当你工作的时候，想法自然会出现，”83岁时，他在一场芬迪发布会的后台说。因此，拉格斐从未停止创作。他同时还是摄影师，作品曾在巴黎美术馆(Pinacotheque de Paris)展出；他也是出版人，在Steidl出版社创办了Edition 7L品牌；2002年，他写了一本很受欢迎的饮食书《卡尔·拉格斐节食法》(The Karl Lagerfeld Diet)，讲述了他是如何减掉92磅的。

His greatest calling, however, was as the orchestrator of his own myth.

然而，他最大的职业使命是自身神话的编纂者。

A self-identified “caricature,” with his dark glasses, powdered ponytail, black jeans, fingerless gloves, starched collars, Chrome Hearts jewelry and obsessive Diet Coke consumption, he achieved such a level of global fame — and controversy — that a $200 Karl Barbie doll, created in collaboration with the toymaker Mattel, sold out in less than an hour in 2014.

墨镜、扑粉的马尾辫、黑色牛仔裤、露指手套、硬挺的衣领、克罗心(Chrome Hearts)珠宝和强迫症般不停喝着健怡可乐，这就是他自己也认同的“漫画形象”，他享有极高的国际声誉——同时也备受争议——以至于2014年，他与美国玩具制造商美泰公司(Mattel)合作推出售价200美元的“卡尔芭比娃娃”，不到一个小时就销售一空。

caricature

表示“人物漫画”，英文解释为“a funny drawing of someone that makes them look silly”。

He was variously referred to as a “genius,” the “kaiser” and “overrated.” His contribution to fashion was not in creating a new silhouette, as designers like Cristobal Balenciaga, Christian Dior and Coco Chanel herself did.

对他的描述五花八门，有“天才”、“皇帝”，也有“被高估的”。他对时尚的贡献并不是像克里斯托瓦尔·巴伦西亚加(Cristobal Balenciaga)、克里斯汀·迪奥(Christian Dior)和可可·香奈儿(Coco Chanel)这些设计师那样，创造出一个新的形象。

Rather, he created a new kind of designer: the shape-shifter.

他创造的是一种新的设计师：变形者。

That is to say, the creative force who lands at the top of a heritage brand and reinvents it by identifying its sartorial semiology and then wresting it into the present with a healthy dose of disrespect and a dollop of pop culture.

具体来说，就是作为一股创造力量，来到一个历史悠久的品牌的最高层，通过识别品牌的服装符号来对其进行改造，然后为之注入适当的不敬和少量流行文化，令品牌融入当下。

sartorial

表示“衣着的；制衣的”，英文解释为“Sartorial means relating to clothes and to the way they are made or worn.”

Not that he put it that way exactly. What he said was: “Chanel is an institution, and you have to treat an institution like a whore — and then you get something out of her.”

他并没有确切地这么说。他说的是：“香奈儿是一个体制，你必须像对待妓女一样对待体制——然后你从她那里得到一些东西。”

This approach has become almost quotidian in the industry, but before Mr. Lagerfeld was hired at Chanel, when the brand was fading into staid irrelevance kept aloft on a raft of perfume and cosmetics, it was a new and startling idea.

如今这种方法在业内几乎已属日常，但在拉格斐被香奈儿聘用之前，这个品牌正逐渐变得无足轻重，被一大堆香水和化妆品架空，他的这种想法是崭新的、令人吃惊的。

staid

表示“严肃呆板的；过时的”，英文解释为“If you say that someone or something is staid, you mean that they are serious, dull, and rather old-fashioned.”

aloft

表示“在高处；在上面；在空中”，英文解释为“in the air or in a higher position”举个🌰：

We held our glasses aloft.

我们高举酒杯。

a raft of sth

表示“大量某物；许多某物”，英文解释为“a large number of things”举个🌰：

The company has launched a whole raft of new software products.

公司推出了大量新软件产品。

That he dared act on it, and then kept doing so with varying degrees of success for decades, transformed not only the fortunes of Chanel (now said to have revenues of over $4 billion a year) but also his own profile.

他敢于采取行动，并在数十年的时间里取得了不同程度的成功，这不仅改善了香奈儿的财务状况（现在它的年收入据称超过40亿美元)，也改变了他自己的形象。

And it cleared a new path for designers who came after, from Tom Ford (who likewise transformed Gucci) to John Galliano (Dior), Riccardo Tisci (Givenchy) and Tomas Maier (Bottega Veneta).

这也为后来的设计师们开辟了一条新道路，从汤姆·福特（Tom Ford，他同样改造了古驰）到约翰·加利亚诺（John Galliano，迪奥）、里卡多·蒂西（Riccardo Tisci，纪梵希）和托马斯·迈尔（Tomas Maier，宝缇嘉）。

Those who wanted to dismiss Mr. Lagerfeld referred to him as a “styliste”: a designer who creates his looks by repurposing what already exists, as opposed to inventing anything new. But he rejected the idea of fashion-as-art, and the designer-as-tortured genius. His goal was more opportunistic.

那些想贬低拉格斐的人把他称为“造型师”：一个通过重新利用已有的东西来创造穿搭造型的设计师，并没有创造任何新东西。但拉格斐拒绝将时尚视为艺术，拒绝将设计师视为痛苦的天才。他的目标更加机会主义。

“I would like to be a one-man multinational fashion phenomenon,” he once said.

他曾经说过：“我想成为由一个人构成的跨国时尚现象。”

Indeed, his output as a designer was rivaled only by his outpourings as a master of the telling aphorism — so much so that his quotations were collected in a book, “The World According to Karl,” in 2013.

事实上，能与他的时装作品媲美的，只有他频频吐露的那些大师级的格言——2013年，他的名言集结出版为《卡尔眼中的世界》(The World According to Karl)一书。

aphorism

aphorism /ˈæfəˌrɪzəm/ 表示“格言；警句”，英文解释为“An aphorism is a short witty sentence which expresses a general truth or comment.”

Some choice excerpts: “Sweatpants are a sign of defeat,” and “I'm very much down to earth. Just not this earth.”

其中一些杰作：“运动裤是失败的标志”和“我非常脚踏实地，只不过不是地球的地。”

Whether his statements were true was immaterial (anyway, it was conceptually true, or true at that moment). The truth could be a fungible concept to Mr. Lagerfeld, who was fond of taking creative license with the past. His birth year, for example, was a matter of some dispute: was it 1938, as Chanel believed, or 1933, as a book by the writer Alicia Drake asserted? Or was it 1935, as he told the magazine Paris Match in 2013? (The Hamburg Genealogical Society says he was born on Sept. 10, 1935.)

他的说法是否正确并不重要（无论如何，它们在概念上是正确的，或者在说的时候是正确的）。对拉格斐来说，真相可能是一个可以替代的概念，他喜欢对自己的过去进行创造加工。比如，他的出生年份就存在争议：是香奈儿认为的1938年，还是作家艾丽西亚·德雷克(Alicia Drake)在一本书中断言的1933年？抑或是他在2013年接受《巴黎竞赛画报》(Paris Match)杂志采访时所说的1935年？（《汉堡宗谱学会》[Hamburg Genealogical Society]说，他生于1935年9月10日。）

immaterial

表示“无关紧要的”，英文解释为“If you say that something is immaterial, you mean that it is not important or not relevant.”举个🌰：

Whether we like him or not is immaterial.

我们喜不喜欢他都不重要。

His personal proclivities were a constantly mutating collection of decades, people and disciplines. His one great fear was of being bored. His conversations (or monologues) could, in almost one breath, bounce from Anita Ekberg romping in the Trevi fountain, to how rich women in the 1920s slept under ermine sheets, and then to the Danish fairy tale illustrator Kay Nielsen. His one blind spot was his own mortality, which he refused to acknowledge.

他的个人喜好是一个不断变化的庞大组合，包括各种年代、各种人、各种学科。他最大的恐惧就是无聊。他的谈话（或独白）一口气从安妮塔·埃克伯格(Anita Ekberg)在特雷维喷泉边嬉戏，跳跃到1920年代的富家女子睡觉时盖白鼬皮被子，再跳到丹麦童话插画家凯·尼尔森(Kay Nielsen)。他自己的死亡是他唯一的盲点，他拒绝承认其存在。

proclivity

表示“癖性；倾向”，英文解释为“A proclivity is a tendency to behave in a particular way or to like a particular thing, often a bad way or thing.”如：a proclivity to daydream. 白日做梦的一种癖好。

romp

表示“（尤指又跑又跳地）嬉闹”，英文解释为“to play in a noisy way, especially by running, jumping etc”举个🌰：

They could hear the children romping around upstairs.

他们听到孩子们在楼上蹦跳打闹。

As he said in the 2008 documentary “Lagerfeld Confidential”: “I don't want to be real in other people's lives. I want to be an apparition.”

正如他在2008年的纪录片《拉格斐机密》(Lagerfeld Confidential)中所说，“我不想成为别人生活中的真实人物，我想成为一个幻影。”

apparition

表示“幽灵，鬼魂；幻影”，英文解释为“something that you imagine you can see, especially the spirit of a dead person”。

来源：纽约时报

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