好英语网男士潮流：绅士西装时尚已至穷途末路了吗？
This week Goldman Sachs became the latest of many firms to issue new guidelines on work dress codes, allowing more flexibility – male employees can ditch the suit for chinos and loosen their ties, as long as they ‘exercise good judgment’. Is this the beginning of the end for the traditional suit-and-tie look for men? And, if so, what does that say about male identity?
最近，许多公司发布了更加灵活的工作着装新规范，高盛（Goldman Sachs）便是其中一员。公司中的男性员工可以脱掉西装，换上宽松的便裤，松开领带，只要能“表现出良好的判断力”即可。这是否说明男士传统的西装革履形象从此开始瓦解？如果是的话，这体现了男性身份怎样的变化？
The suit has long been synonymous with a certain kind of masculine, ‘gentlemanly’ persona. But what does it mean to be a ‘gentleman’ now? The word seems antiquated, with its evocation of shiny leather brogues, three-piece suits and manly codes of honour. A gentleman is supposed to be a cut above everyone else. The American men’s style magazine Gentleman’s Quarterly, founded in 1931, changed its name to GQ in 1957, on the cusp of an era when traditional masculinity, and male authority, came under sustained attack. The 1960s in the US were marked by the Vietnam war, vehement protest and cultural upheaval. President John F Kennedy, shining knight and symbol of ‘Camelot’, was murdered in front of the world in 1963.
西装一直以来都是男性绅士形象的代名词，但是“绅士”在当今时代到底意味着什么呢？这个词总是会让人联想起锃亮的牛津雕花皮鞋、三件套西装和男士气概。所谓绅士总有“高人一等”的感觉，但现在这个词似乎已经过时。1931年创办的美国男性时尚杂志《绅士季刊》（Gentleman's Quarterly）于1957年更名为《GQ》，当时传统男子气概和男性权威正受到人们的鞭挞。越南战争、激烈抗议和文化剧变是20世纪60年代美国的标志。1963年，肯尼迪总统，这位光鲜亮丽的骑士和传奇领袖，在全世界面前被谋杀。
波特先生评出的2018年最佳着装男士的造型多种多样
JFK wore sharp single-breasted suits, crisp white shirts and muted ties. His hairstyle, short with a parting on one side, never changed. The look was smart and stereotypical; it was all about being in control of the details. Yes, JFK shone. But on most other men, the suit was just a uniform.
肯尼迪身着笔挺的单排扣西装，挺括的白衬衫，低调的领带。他的发型从来没变过，边分短发，整个人看起来聪明又老练，一切细节都在掌控之中。身着西服的肯尼迪确实耀眼夺目，但对大多数男人来说，西装只是一种制服。
Masculinity was supposed to be uniform too. By the 1960s, serious fraying had begun. Think of the anarchic colour, pattern and layering of the hippy look – it was all about freedom of expression, and defiance of the grey-suited male template and everything it stood for. Blue jeans became popular in that period, and from the comfort, easy style and affordability of jeans, it’s a small step to the street-style revolution of today.
男子气概也应该是整齐划一的。20世纪60年代，美国社会出现了严重的摩擦。想想看那时无政府主义的种种表现和嬉皮士形象，一切都与表达自由有关。人们开始蔑视身着灰色西装的男性刻板印象及其所代表的一切。舒适、简单和廉价的蓝色牛仔裤从那时开始流行起来，这是向今天的街头风格革命迈出的一小步。
Cut to the Oscars at the end of February in 2019. Plenty of men turn up in suits, but there are also wild variations in colour and cut. Chadwick Boseman, one of the stars of the superhero movie Black Panther, turned up wearing a heavily decorated outfit (Givenchy haute couture) that had more in common with a dress than a suit. Most strikingly of all, Billy Porter, the star of the TV series Pose (about the polysexual New York voguing scene in the 1980s), wore a voluminous gown by Christian Siriano that merged into something like a tuxedo jacket from the waist up. How did we get from the all-purpose business suit, on the all-purpose man, to this?
2019年2月底的奥斯卡颁奖典礼上，当然很多男士都是西装革履，但颜色和剪裁有了很大的变化。出演超级英雄电影《黑豹》的博斯曼（Chadwick Boseman）身穿一套装饰华丽的纪梵希高级定制時装亮相。这套衣服看起来更像一条连衣裙。最引人注目的还是电视剧《姿态》（这是20世纪80年代纽约上流社会的一个多性别场景）中的主演波特（Billy Porter），他穿着一件由克里斯蒂安·西里亚诺（Christian Siriano）设计的宽大长袍，但从腰部以上是一件类似燕尾服的夹克。从萬用的男士西装到燕尾服长袍，这其中的发展过程到底怎么样的呢？
Forget about debating what a gentleman is: we are now in the throes of debating what a man is, and maybe more crucially, what sort of person a man is. ‘He’ is becoming a less important consideration than ‘me’ and ‘we’: the many communities we belong to define who we are, and ‘man’ is just one of them.
别再争辩到底什么是“绅士”了，我们现在所面临的难题是“男人”是什么，或更关键的是男人应该是什么样的人。“他”已越來越不像“我”和“我们”那么重要。我们所处的群体定义了我们是谁，而“他”只是我們之一而已。
Which brings us to the latest transformation of the US GQ magazine. At the beginning of 2019 Will Welch, GQ’s former creative director, was appointed its new editor-in-chief with the brief of modernising the title. For some time now, print media has been struggling against the explosion of online media. GQ’s problems have been compounded by the fact that its target audience is now millennials and post-millennials (people under 40) – a group who are hard to target, and who hate being targeted; and that the definition of ‘man’ is blurring (‘gentlemen’s’ magazine to ‘men’s’ magazine to… what?). Welch would seem to have an impossible task on his hands.
我们再来看看美国《GQ》杂志最近的一次转型。2019年初，《GQ》前创意总监韦尔奇（Will Welch）被任命为该杂志的新总编，旨在让杂志跟上现代化的步伐。印刷媒体很长一段时间以来一直与呈爆炸式增长的网络媒体相较量。《GQ》面对的问题更加复杂，因为其目标读者是千禧一代和后千禧一代（40岁以下的人）。这一群体很难取悦，而且讨厌被定位。对于“男人”的定义也渐渐变得模糊，《GQ》从“绅士”杂志转型到“男性”杂志，谁知道未来会有什么样的变化呢。韦尔奇似乎肩负了一项不可能完成的任务。
The ‘Letter from the Editor’ of his first issue (February 2019) is accompanied by a photo in which he is sitting cross-legged on the ground, wearing trainers that aren’t tied and a casual shirt unbuttoned with a T-shirt underneath. His hair is parted on the side but his hand has two tattoos on it. Something tells me we’re not in Camelot anymore.
韦尔奇上任后，在第一期（2019年2月）的“编辑致读者信”中附了一张自己的照片，照片中他盘腿坐在地上，穿着运动鞋和休闲衬衫，鞋子没系鞋带，衬衫没扣扣子，里面是一件t恤。头发还是侧分，但手上却有两个纹身图案。男士的形象已经不再是以前那般高贵了。
Anything goes
一切皆有可能
The introductory photo is a statement of intent, in a magazine that used to devote column inches to tie widths and pocket squares. “I just don’t feel any pressure to live up to somebody else’s idea of how the editor of GQ should dress,” Welch tells BBC Culture. “My version of GQ is about knowing yourself and trusting yourself and learning to be your best self instead of aspiring to some imaginary ideal, or wearing a particular style of shirt.”
这张照片旨在表明杂志的意图，要知道该杂志以前有专栏专门讨论领带的宽度和西服口袋的形状。韦尔奇在接受BBC文化频道采访时表示：“我不会按照别人对《GQ》编辑着装的看法行事。我对《GQ》的理解是了解自己，信任自己，做最好的自己，而不是去追求某种想象中的理想状态，或者穿一件特别的衬衫。”
In the entire issue, there are only a handful of suits, the most conservative of them worn without socks. The rest features a range of people working their own style – Frank Ocean, St Vincent, John Mayer and James Baldwin among them. It feels like some kind of trail is being blazed here. As Welch comments, “I think the erosion of binaries like man-woman, male-female, black-white and so on is good for culture and society. It means we get to keep our brains turned on and our hearts open. It means we get to recognise and respect the dignity and singularity of the individual.’”
在张一期的《GQ》中只出现了少数几套西装，其中最保守的一套还没有搭配袜子。其余的则是一群有着自己着装风格的人，奥森（Frank Ocean）、文森特（St Vincent）、梅尔（John Mayer）和鲍德温（James Baldwin）都在其中。感觉好像特別突出了某种着装路径。正如韦尔奇所言：“我认为，冲刷男人和女人、雄性和雌性、黑人和白人之类二元结构对文化和社会都有好处。这意味着我们要时刻保持头脑清醒，敞开心扉，认识并尊重个体的尊严和独特性。”
Another good reference point is the menswear online retailer Mr Porter. One obvious side effect of men thinking in greater depth about who they are, and how they want to be, is the fast-growing menswear sector. A few minutes looking through sites like Mr Porter gives you a sense of the vast array of clothing and accessories available, only a small minority of which are suits. Yet tailoring by luxury brands such as Tom Ford and Ermenegildo Zegna has always been central to Mr Porter's market, according to its buying director, Fiona Firth: “Certainly in an age where streetwear has ruled, traditional tailoring has fallen by the wayside as men dress more casually in their everyday lives. That said, tailoring has and always will maintain its relevance as there will always be an occasion in a man’s life when one will need to wear a suit – be it a wedding, corporate event and for many still, the office.” But it is changing, adds Firth. “The suit is modernised by embracing a casual, relaxed approach as men dress it down to adhere to their modern dressing standards. I think the suit will always have a future, it will just adapt to accommodate men’s ever-changing lifestyles.”
男装在线零售商“波特先生”（Mr Porter）是另一个例子。如今男性比较深入地思考自己的身份以及想成为何样的人，反映此变化的是男装行业的快速增长。花几分钟浏览一下像波特先生这样的网站，你就会对琳琅满目的服装和配饰有一个大致的了解，其中只有一小部分商品是西服套装。奢侈品成衣，如汤姆福特（Tom Ford）和杰尼亚（Ermenegildo Zegna），一直是波特先生的核心市场。其购买董事弗斯（Fiona Firth）说：“当今时代，休闲服装成为主流，人们日常生活中的穿着更加随意，传统成衣大不如从前。但是男人在生活中总会有需要穿西装的场合，比如说婚礼、公司活动，对多数人而言是办公室，所以西装并不会完全退出人们的生活。”但菲尔斯补充说：“情况在不断改变。紧跟潮流的西装会变得更加休闲随意，更符合现代男性的着装标准。我认为西装是有未来的，会适应男性不断变化的生活方式。”
And Mr Porter’s Best Dressed Men of 2018 is a list of eight men, three of whom are wearing suits (only one of whom, Prince Charles, is wearing a traditional version, as one might expect). The eight are from a range of ethnicities, and are very much their own men with their own style. The footballer Héctor Bellerínis photographed wearing silk pyjamas and furry Gucci mules at London Fashion Week. He looks completely blasé about it all. The Best Dressed Men of February 2019, by contrast, may be more low key, but it is clear that a lot of thought has gone into the way they dress. Four of the eight are wearing suits (the list is skewed by the Oscars). Chadwick Boseman looks striking, again, in a pink suit. The focus of these lists is on people who dress adventurously, if they feel like it, and aren’t afraid to be themselves.
波特先生评选的2018年最佳服装男士名单上的8位男士中只有3位穿着西装。正如人们所料，其中只有查尔斯王子穿着传统的西装。这8个人来自不同的种族，非常有自己的个性和风格。足球运动员贝列林（Héctor Bellerín）在伦敦时装周上穿着丝绸睡衣和毛茸茸的古驰（Gucci）拖鞋亮相。他对这一切似乎完全满不在乎。相比之下，2019年2月的最佳着装男士可能比较低调，但很明显，他们也在穿着上花了很多心思。8位候选人中有4位穿着西装（榜单因奥斯卡而有所倾斜）。博斯曼身着粉色西装，再次吸引了大众目光。这些榜单上的人是敢于冒险的人，忠实于自己的喜好，并且不害怕做自己。
It could also be said that, like the men who wear it, the suit is changing. Where once wearing a suit involved obeying strict protocols, now it seems that anything is possible. One routinely sees smart suits teamed with trainers, for example, and suits in a variety of hues, including purple and pastel pink. Suits are being absorbed into a larger and more complicated fashion grammar. As Welch observes, “When I’m in LA, or New York, or London, or Paris, what I see is that everything is relevant at once. You can wear a suit or limited-edition sneakers. You can look a little 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, or 1990s. The same person can dress a little formal, punk, mod, disco, hippy-ish, or hip-hop in the course of a week. That’s what makes the current moment really unique.”
也可以说，西装本身和穿西装的男人一样都在改变。在过去，穿西装需要遵守严格的规矩，现在看来一切皆有可能。例如，人们经常看到时髦西装与运动鞋搭配，以及各种色调的套装，包括紫色和柔和的粉色。西装正被一个更大、更复杂的时尚穿法所吸收。正如韦尔奇所言：“我在洛杉矶、纽约、伦敦或巴黎时，我眼前的一切都互相融合。你既可以穿套装也可以穿限量版运动鞋。你可以走复古路线，回到20世纪60年代、70年代、80年代或90年代。同一个人可以在一周的时间里尝试各种各样不同的风格，正式、朋克、摩登、迪斯科、嬉皮或嘻哈。这就是为什么当下的时尚如此之独特。”
In terms of what’s going on with human identity, we live in exciting times. The male culture that gave rise to the strict discipline of the suit may be dying, but something else is taking shape. The grey or black suit will always be a classic. I look forward to the time when the ‘tuxedo gown’ is a classic as well.
就人类身份而言，我们生活在一个黄金时代。催生严苛的着装规范的男性文化可能正在消亡，但其他东西也逐渐成形。灰色或黑色西装永远是经典。我期待未来“燕尾服长袍”也能成为经典服装。