Imagine a time before the red carpet.

想象一下红毯出现之前的世界。

(Shock, horror, impossible — how did we ever get dressed in the morning? I know, it’s asking a lot to even contemplate, but bear with me.)

（震惊，恐怖，不可思议——我们早上起来穿什么呢？我知道，光是想想就觉得很有压力，不过请允许我讲下去。）

A time before paid brand ambassadors. A time when we were not schooled, every day, by social media and blogs and people pages and best-dressed lists to believe that how a celebrity looked while making a public and promotional appearance was the paradigm for how everyone should look. A time when fashion role models were not clothed by other people with agendas of their own and did not change their look with the change of a contract. A time when “street style” had not been co-opted by brands themselves, and people actually dressed in their own wardrobes, as opposed to a wardrobe lent to them for the express purpose of getting photographed in the course of their “real” staged lives.

想想付费的品牌大使出现之前的那些年。那时，我们不是每天都接受社交媒体、博客、名人主页和最佳着装榜的教育，认为名人公开亮相或进行宣传时的着装方式是每个人都应该效仿的典范。那时，时尚偶像们不是让其他人（他们有着自己的计划）来决定自己穿什么，在合同到期之前不敢改变自己的造型。那时，“街头时尚”还没有被品牌同化，人们真的是用自己衣橱里的服装进行搭配，而不是用借来的衣服在“真实的”舞台生活中让人拍照。

A time when having your own style was an authentic and necessary goal, and the best way to achieve it was to study the women who had done it themselves. If you could find them.

那时，拥有自己的风格是一个真实和必要的目标，而实现这一目标的最佳方式是研究那些已经实现目标的女人的做法——如果你能找到她们的话。

As awards season looms, starting with the Gotham Independent Film Awards later this month and culminating more than 13 statuette ceremonies later with the Oscars, and we prepare to be inundated with a cascade of dress-like-this red carpet images, that time is worth revisiting.

随着颁奖季的临近——先是本月底的哥谭独立电影奖(Gotham Independent Film Awards)，高潮是将颁发超过13个小金人的奥斯卡奖颁奖礼(Oscars)，我们已做好准备被一大堆“像这样着装”的红毯照片淹没——我们值得重温那个时代。

How to do it, you ask? Get thee to a museum.

你会问：怎么重温呢？去博物馆喽。

This month the Costume Institute at the Met and the Palais Galliera in Paris are unveiling shows dedicated to celebrating and showcasing the eyes and wardrobes of two different private women of extreme style: “La Robe Retrouvée: Les Robes-Trésors de la Comtesse Greffulhe” (“Fashion Regained: The Treasured Dresses of Countess Greffulhe”) at the Paris fashion museum, and “Jacqueline de Ribes: The Art of Style” at the Met.

本月（11月），大都会艺术博物馆(Met)时装学院(Costume Institute)和巴黎时尚博物馆加列拉宫(Palais Galliera)正在举办两场展览，赞美和展示两位具有鲜明风格的不同女性的眼光和衣橱：巴黎时尚博物馆举办的是“重新流行的时尚：女伯爵伊丽莎白·格雷菲勒的珍贵连衣裙”(Fashion Regained: The Treasured Dresses of Countess Greffulhe)；大都会艺术博物馆举办的是“杰奎琳·德里贝斯：时尚的艺术”(Jacqueline de Ribes: The Art of Style)。

Is it a coincidence that two of the most important fashion institutions decided to curate directionally similar shows at about the same time? Possibly. Or perhaps it’s a reaction to the current ethos.

这两家重要的时尚机构几乎在同一时间决定组织方向类似的展览，这是巧合吗？也许是。不过，这也可能是对当下社会风气的自然反应。

“We always talk about the designers, but rarely about the clients,” said Olivier Saillard, director of the Galliera, explaining his choice. But, he said, “it is the clients that may have the most to teach us.”

加列拉宫的馆长奥利维耶·萨亚尔(Olivier Saillard)在解释他的选择时说：“我们总是谈论设计师，但是很少谈论他们的客户，而最能教育我们的可能是那些客户。”

About? “Not buying a lot, but filtering through fashion to find out what is right for you,” said Harold Koda, curator in charge at the Costume Institute. The two men were not speaking to each other (they weren’t even speaking the same language, and these statements are from entirely different discussions) but they were clearly on the same conceptual page.

教育我们什么呢？“不要买很多衣服，而是从时尚中筛选出适合自己的衣服，”时装学院的策展主管哈罗德·科达(Harold Koda)说。他们俩不是在交谈（他们甚至说的不是同一种语言，他们的这些话来自毫无关联的对话），但他们的想法显然一致。

The Met show, which has been in the works for eight years, since Mr. Koda and his fellow curator, Andrew Bolton, had lunch with Countess de Ribes in her Paris apartment, includes 60 outfits, primarily evening gowns, from the 1960s through the 1990s (before the ’60s, Mr. Koda said, Countess de Ribes gave most of her clothes to charity).

大都会艺术博物馆的展览已经筹划了八年，始于科达和策展同事安德鲁·博尔顿(Andrew Bolton)在德里贝斯女伯爵的巴黎公寓里共进午餐之后。这场展览包括从20世纪60年代至90年代的60套服装，以晚礼服为主（科达说，德里贝斯女伯爵把60年代之前的大部分服装捐给了慈善机构）。

One of Truman Capote’s original swans, along with Gloria Vanderbilt and Marella Agnelli, Jacqueline de Ribes was famed for her Nefertiti-like profile, immortalized by Richard Avedon, and celebrated for her taste, often collaborating with the couturiers who dressed her so that her clothes would be, Mr. Koda said, labeled “Jacqueline de Ribes for Christian Dior under Marc Bohan.”

杰奎琳·德里贝斯曾（和格洛丽亚·范德比尔特[Gloria Vanderbilt]和马雷拉·阿涅利[Marella Agnelli]一起）是杜鲁门·卡波特(Truman Capote)的灵感来源。她的侧脸酷似纳费提提(Nefertiti)，理查德·埃夫登(Richard Avedon)为她拍摄的照片令她永垂不朽，她的品味得到人们的赞赏。她经常与为她设计服装的设计师们合作，她的服装因此被称为“马克·博安(Marc Bohan)为迪奥(Christian Dior)设计的杰奎琳·德里贝斯牌服装”。

By 1982, she had her own eponymous clothing business (it closed in 1995), and as one of the first socialites-turned-designers, she paved the way for names like Carolina Herrera and Tory Burch. Her hallmark was, Mr. Koda said, a “kind of idiosyncratic exoticism” marked by saturated colors, rigorous lines, asymmetry and an appreciation for the power of a strategically placed ruffle.

到1982年，德里贝斯已经拥有自己的同名服装公司（1995年关门），作为第一批社会名流出身的设计师之一，她为Carolina Herrera和Tory Burch等品牌开辟了道路。科达说，德里贝斯的特点是“独特的异国风情”——饱满的色彩、精细的线条、不对称和设计巧妙的褶皱。

The Galliera exhibition has 50 dresses from couturiers like Charles Frederick Worth, Fortuny and Jeanne Lanvin, which evolve from the lavishly embroidered and structured gowns of the turn of the century to looser, more flowing and feathered pieces, all of which once belonged to the woman who inspired the character of the Duchess of Guermantes in Marcel Proust’s “In Search of Lost Time.”

加列拉宫的展览包括多位设计师设计的50件礼服，比如查尔斯·弗雷德里克·沃思(Charles Frederick Worth)、福图尼(Fortuny)和让娜·朗万(Jeanne Lanvin)，从20世纪初有着奢华刺绣和精致剪裁的礼服发展为更宽松流畅轻盈的服装——所有这些都曾经属于伊丽莎白·格雷菲勒。她是马塞尔·普鲁斯特(Marcel Proust)《追忆似水年华》(In Search of Lost Time)中盖尔芒特女公爵(Duchess of Guermantes)的原型。

As to why … well, look to the clothes. Together the gowns are “about more than fashion,” Mr. Saillard said. “They are about a woman who built her own wardrobe to create an identity,” one that involved shaping not only the aesthetic tastes of her peers, but also their cultural and political values. The Comtesse de Greffulhe would “say to designers, ‘O.K., show me your whole collection — and now forget that, and do something else,’” Mr. Saillard said.

至于为什么……呃，看看那些衣服你就知道了。萨亚尔说，这些礼服“不仅是关于时尚，而且是关于一个用自己的衣橱塑造身份的女人”，她不仅想塑造同龄人的审美品位，而且想塑造他们的文化和政治价值观。萨亚尔说，格雷菲勒女伯爵会“对设计师们说，‘好的，给我看看你的整个系列——现在忘了这个系列，做点别的’”。

Pointedly, though the Comtesse de Greffulhe made sartorial waves almost a half-century before Jacqueline de Ribes, both exhibitions are marked by a palpable aesthetic consistency, a timelessness as opposed to a sense of trend, in part because their subjects dressed to please themselves, and to express themselves. Not to make an impact on mobile, or “pop” for the paparazzi.

虽然格雷菲勒女伯爵几乎比杰奎琳·德里贝斯早半个世纪掀起服装浪潮，但是这两场展览具有明显的审美一致性。它们具有永恒感，而非潮流感，一个原因是这两位女主人公选择服装的出发点是让自己高兴，是为了表达自己，而不是为了在网上产生影响力，也不是为了“突然现身”让狗仔队拍照。

“These were dresses made not to be shown, but to be worn,” Mr. Saillard said of the de Greffulhe wardrobe. Which is not to say the dresses are subtle or retiring (they can be, by contrast, notably dramatic), merely that they are purposeful.

萨亚尔提到格雷菲勒的服装时说：“这些衣服的制作目的是穿着而非展示。”他的意思不是说这些衣服保守过时（相反，有些非常引人注目），只是说它们具有目的性。

Indeed, though Mr. Koda acknowledged that he had thought of it as the story of the life of a woman of leisure, complete with furniture and art. But when the countess (who is 86), said: “That’s not what I was about. From the time I was a child I resisted being put into that box. I wanted to create.” Clothes were simply the vehicle and the expression.

的确，虽然科达承认，本来他把这看作一个关于富裕有闲阶层女人的生活的故事。但是这位女伯爵（今年86岁）说：“我不是那样的。我从小就拒绝被归入那一类。我想创造。”衣服只是她的表达手段。

“I could see the gowns she had made in the 1980s as part of a sensibility she had been developing all her life,” Mr. Koda said.

科达说：“我可以把她在20世纪80年代制作的礼服看作她一生都在探索的一种感情的一部分。”

So there is, for example, a continuum between a shell pink sleeveless Guy Laroche evening column from 1962 with a fuchsia embroidered train (which also had a matching fuchsia embroidered coat, but the countess took the coat and combined it with assorted bits and pieces — short sable-trimmed sleeves and bouffant trousers made of tulle from a wholesale fabric seller — for a costume ball in 1969) and a shell pink one-shouldered Jacqueline de Ribes double-faced one-shoulder evening gown with an asymmetric ruffle framing the neck. And it is possible to see the same eye at work in a 1968 couture Yves Saint Laurent salmon jumpsuit with a cock feather ruff at the neck, and a black velvet Jacqueline de Ribes column with white spotted black feathers bristling around the throat from 1986.

所以，我们能从很多服装中看到一种延续性。比如，盖伊·拉罗什(Guy Laroche)1962年设计的带有紫红色刺绣裙裾的浅粉色无袖直筒晚礼服（它还有一个配套的紫红色刺绣外衣，不过1969年，这位女伯爵用这件外套搭配各种小饰品——比如黑貂皮镶边短袖——以及用从面料批发商那里买来的薄纱做成的宽大裤子，参加一个化装舞会）和颈部装饰着不对称褶皱的浅粉色双面植绒单肩杰奎琳·德里贝斯晚礼服。伊夫·圣罗兰(Yves Saint Laurent)1968年设计的浅橙色公鸡毛飞边高级定制连衫裤与杰奎琳·德里贝斯1986年设计的白斑点黑羽毛竖领黑天鹅绒直筒连衣裙，也有相通之处。

“It requires a certain amount of discipline to say, ‘This is what’s good for me, this is who I am, and whatever trend is out there, I am only going to buy into to the extent I can use it to frame the best portrait of myself,’” Mr. Koda said. “This is all about the reality of a certain kind of life.”

科达说：“一个人需要一定的自律精神才能说出这样的话：‘这是适合我的，这是我想要的。不管外面流行什么，我只会购买能用来展示最好的自我的服装’。这是某一种人生的本质。”

And though that kind of life, or both kinds of lives, may seem on the surface a relic of another age, the broader, more abstract lessons of each show — about choosing and thinking for yourself, about understanding the identity you create via clothes and the opportunities therein — are entirely contemporary. More timeless, even, than the dresses themselves.

虽然那种生活，或者说那两种生活，似乎都存在于另一个时代的废墟之上，但是我们从这两场展览中所得到的更宽泛抽象的教益与当代生活十分相关——为自己而选择和思考，通过服装塑造身份、创造机会。这些教益甚至比那些服装更具有永恒意义。