皮尔．卡丹:时尚风格转变太快

Today's fashion designers change styles much too fast, partly due to twice-yearly collections, making it harder to create couture that lasts for years, designer Pierre Cardin said on Tuesday.

In Tokyo for a show co-sponsored by a Japanese department store, the 88-year-old doyen of French fashion also said that it is now much harder for designers than when he first started in the business roughly 60 years ago.

"After the war, there were very few designers. Now there are so many designers around the world, in every country. It is impossible to change the fashions every year, every six months," he told a news conference.

"There are lots of designs that are very beautiful, crazy, fantastic on the eyes, but they are not making fashion for tomorrow. You can see it anywhere... but four or five years later, no fashion."

Cardin also said that when he launched his own label in 1950 he was told that what he was doing was "impossible" and that only belief in himself and obsession carried him through.

"At the time I was told that trying to make what I did was like trying to walk on the moon -- impossible. It was my strategy to believe that one day a man goes up," he said.

"My work was like an addiction. That's why I've been able to do it for so long."

Cardin has become a household name on products around the world from couture clothing to alarm clocks. He was the first Western couturier to turn to Japan as a high fashion market in the late 1950s and later China in 1975.

The designer was expelled from the Chambre Syndicale -- the monitoring body of Haute Couture in Paris -- for launching a ready-to-wear collection in 1959, but was soon reinstated.

服装设计师皮尔．卡丹周二说，现在的服装设计师风格转变得太快，一半是因为一年两次的时装发布会，使得设计出经久耐看的衣服变得更加困难。

这位88岁的法国时装界元老在东京参加由某日本百货商场共同赞助的时装秀时还说，比起他60年前在这一行起步之时，现在的服装设计师要出成果更加困难。

他在一个新闻发布会上说：“战争结束那会儿，服装设计师非常少。而现在全世界的每个国家都有这么多服装设计师。要想每年甚至每六个月就转变一次时装风格是不可能的。”

“现在的很多服装设计都很漂亮，很有创意，非常吸引人的眼球，但这些服装不是面向未来设计的。你到处都可以看见它们，然而四五年过后，这些衣服就不再时尚。”

卡丹还说，当他在1950年开创自己的品牌时，人们对他说他正在做的是“不可能的事情”，但他只相信自己，再加上他对服装设计的痴迷，帮助他度过了一切。

他说：“那时候别人告诉我，我想要做到的事情就像试图在月球上行走一样，是不可能的。但我相信，一个人总有一天会熬出头，这是我当时的对策。”

“我的工作就像是一个嗜好。这就是我为什么能够坚持做这么久的原因。”

皮尔卡丹已经成为全世界家喻户晓的名字，他所经营的产品从时装到闹钟，一应俱全。他在20世纪50年代末和1975年分别进军日本和中国的时装市场，成为首个开辟日本和中国高级时装市场的西方时装设计师。

1959年，这位设计师由于开办一个成衣时装发布会而被巴黎的高级时装监管机构法国高级时装协会开除，不过后来他很快就恢复原职。

Vocabulary:

couture: the design and production of expensive and fashionable clothes; these clothes（时装设计制作；时装）

couturier: a person who designs, makes and sells expensive, fashionable clothes, especially for women （尤指）女装设计师；时装裁缝；女装商人

Haute Couture: The designing and making of high-quality fashionable clothes by leading fashion houses, esp. to order（高档时装业，高级时装，高级定制时装）

ready-to-wear: (of clothes) made for the general market and sold through stores rather than made to order for an individual customer; off the rack （服装）现成的；成衣