无尽的T形舞台，褪色的光环

——（译自《纽约时报》2008年9月21日）

九月初的纽约时装周，T形舞台上充满了肉肤色，这种色彩从未有人穿过。

才华横溢而缺少名气的年轻设计师派屈克. 芮塞帕斯基（Partrik Rzepski）以一场时装秀揭开了时装周的序幕，模特们身着肉肤色的紧身服出场，其拉链开在背后，就像是长筒袜的接缝。他的服装在亚洲三家妇女时装精品店出售。“人们认为美就是单纯，”芮塞帕斯基说，“而我认为美可以像钉子一样坚韧。”

用这番话来形容时装周表演，就太确切不过了。

凯特和劳拉. 穆里维姐妹出演了一场裸装游行，其衣服式样和尺寸与铜管乐队乐手无毫无区别，几乎同色。戴拉克. 兰姆则上演了一场名副其实的裸体交响乐，肉肤色的平针织布束腰外衣，肉肤色的乔其纱一片装，然后是一件肉肤色的有条纹编织带点网状洋服。

如果到处都是肉肤色，同样也有拉链和荷叶边，那种颓废的效果使人想起好莱坞服装设计师金. 路易斯，最糟糕的是，说一千道一万，都来自于无法抹去的1980年那第二次流行，而那个年代看上去更枯燥乏味，（或者第三次流行，如果考虑到在纽约T形舞台上看见的那一切，是不顾羞耻地对上个季节在欧洲上演的电视肥皂剧“王朝”的集体效忠。）

整个时装周期间埋怨声不绝于耳，那桩生意，尽管在国际上得到见所未有的扩展，一些关键的元素可能已经从人们的视野中消失了。像音乐一样，时髦成了一种部落生意。

虽然过去主流的设计师是从朋克，跳颓废舞的艺术家，玩冲浪滑板或滑板的人那里得到式样启发，而他们现在却被迫满足于现实，他们不愿向过去那样任人宰割，这年头谁都要建立自己的品牌。

“我们如今生活在一个卡拉OK的世界，”马考姆. 麦克拉伦最近说，他是音乐指挥，时装幻想家和文化牛虻，当他站在嘉年华周年庆的红地毯上时，他的声音高亢了起来。

使麦克拉伦特别振奋的是下个月克里斯丁伦顿珍贵物品拍卖会，出自高级二手古董店“复兴”收藏的珍品，包括多种由麦克拉伦先生和维维娜. 威斯特伍德创作的1970年的款式，他们没有创造朋克的美学，却系统地创造了朋克的商业模式。

麦克拉伦已经在新闻媒体和法庭上阐述了他的看法，他认为麦克拉伦和威斯特伍德服装都是最现代的复制品。如果果真如此（佳士得坚称它们是真品），麦克拉伦先生提出的更大问题是有关大部分美学作品的空洞，时尚也不例外。如果文化产品不与特定的文化挂钩，那有何意义？

NEW YORK - The catwalks at Fashion Week in early September were filled with nude, the color no one has ever been.

The talented and obscure young designer Patrik Rzepski, whose clothes are sold in three boutiques in Asia, opened the week with a show in which the models came out clad in nude-colored skintight leggings that zippered up the back like a stocking seam. "People think beautiful means innocent," Mr. Rzepski said. "I think beautiful can be tough as nails."

When it comes to Fashion Week, truer words have rarely been uttered. The sisters Kate and Laura Mulleavy offered a parade of nude dresses as form-fitting as Band-Aids and roughly the same color. Derek Lam presented a veritable nude symphony with a nude jersey tunic and a nude double georgette one-piece and then a nude striped knit pointelle mesh dress.

If nude has been everywhere, so too have zippers and flounces and degrade effects that recall the Hollywood designer Jean Louis and, lastly, a million references to the un-killable 1980s, the decade that looks even more insipid the second time around (or the third, if one considers that much seen on New York runways shamelessly reprises the collective homage to "Dynasty," the television soap opera, on offer in Europe a season ago).

There is no putting off the rumblings heard throughout Fashion Week that the business, in its unprecedented international expansion, may have lost sight of some key fundamentals. Like music, fashion is a tribal business.

While it used to be the case that mainstream designers observed this by taking style cues from punks or hip-hop artists or surfers or skateboarders, they are now forced to contend with the reality that those people are less readily exploited than before. These days they all want their own lines.

"We're living in a karaoke world," Malcolm McLaren, the music impresario, fashion visionary and cultural gadfly, said recently, his voice rising to an animated pitch as he stood on the red carpet at the Calvin Klein anniversary party.

What specifically aroused Mr. McLaren was next month's auction at Christie's London of rarities from the archives of the highend vintage store Resurrection, which includes a variety of 1970s items attributed to Mr. McLaren and Vivienne Westwood, who if they did not invent the aesthetics of punk, formalized them commercially.

In Mr. McLaren's view, which he has pursued in the news media and also in court, the McLaren and Westwood garments are mostly modern copies. Whether that is so (Christie's stands by their authenticity), the larger questions Mr. McLaren raises have bearing on the hollowness of much contemporary aesthetic production, fashion not excluded. What is the point of cultural artifacts if they are not connected to any specific culture?