译者注:
喜欢时尚的网友也许会在其它中文传媒中看到这篇文章的译文。本译文绝无抄袭，纯属自娱。我选这篇译文一是喜欢吴季刚这个大男孩（他并不像他看起来那么乖，其实个性还挺执拗的呢!）；二来敬佩他的妈妈为他付出的心血和爱，以及在关键转折点上的坚持；三来是原文作者Daphne Merkin是美国当今知名的小说家，散文家，文学评论家，她的原文文法精湛生动，体现英文之美，想翻译出相映的中文之美有一定的难度，所以决定挑战自己！
对于一个刚到而立之年的男士来说，吴季刚 （本人看上去更年轻）琢磨清了不少事情。除了可以凭目视分解出一件衣服的整个剪裁缝制过程，他还清楚地知道自己的个性为人。“我是个时尚学究，” 四月初的一个晚上，我们坐在纽约中区的Lambs Club，他端着酒杯开心地说，“我不时髦,，骨子里没一丝儿油脂派基因，” 在台湾出生，温哥华长大的他继续说，“你绝对不会见到我在小酒吧里混迹，生来就不是这样。我披头散发过，金发碧眼过，也曾经否认过自己是亚裔。”吴季刚少时先后在麻省和康纳狄克读过两间寄宿学校，铺床折被学会自理，少时为玩具公司设计洋娃娃得以初展设计才华。他已出落为一位极富长远眼光的才俊，对他来说，秩序感至关重要。“杂乱无序不是我的风格。如果我的设计桌是乱的，我就无法工作。”
如果把设计师像政客一样分成自由派和保守派，吴季刚会毫不犹豫地把自己放在极右的保守派里。他对自己毫不激进的作风相当坦然 - “我的时装展风格就是统一整齐” - 他也看不惯当下广泛的传媒令许多人觉得自己对时尚了如指掌。“‘两季前的普拉达’不是时装参考术语。” ，“能在谷歌上找到的资料，我全都不想要。” 吴季刚知道以当下的潮流来说不够酷，但他的设计理念充份表达出他对早期设计风格的浸淫了解。比如在给晚装设计免缝打摺的手艺上，他极力推崇 Madame Gres （译者注一)。
“如果你想要一件上好的T恤，别来找我。” 2006年吴季刚从帕森设计学院（译者注二)毕业，即首次推出他极具女性化精致剪裁的时装系列。至今，他的审美理念一直走的是这种无比专精和坦然的极品路线。吴季刚公司的筹资来源于他在洋娃娃玩具制造公司Interity Toys任职创意总监所得，他的父母拥有一间食品及饲料生产出口公司，他们一直为吴季刚提供着财政援助和经营路线方面的建议。（他说他的妈妈从没有一次错过他的时装展。）
吴季刚与众不同的地方，在于他自事业起始从未尝试过取悦消费大众，相反地，他从一开始就定格了完整的卖点对象，就像他描述的，“一种特殊的强势女人，坚强、自信，还带着一种威严。”吴季刚不像同龄的年轻设计师，对自己的设计过程和对自己影响深远的大师们 - Norman Norell, Charles James 以及 Yves Saint Laurent 他守口如瓶，仅凭出展的衣饰表现反简约路线，（“我一定会用羽毛，珠串或是波卡点做饰物”）其作品透着令人惊诧的早熟和精致。除了拥有一群忠实的贵富女客户外，吴季刚还带着一帮他称为“吴家女”的年轻女巨星 - Rachel Weisz, Jaime King, Michelle Williams, Emma Stone 和 Julianne Moore - 其中为首的，就是他的拍档，相片中的佳人Diane Kruger.
还是几年前，闻知吴季刚的仅限于时装界的行内人和Bergdorf Goodman, Neiman Marcus, Saks, 伦敦的 Browns 等欧美一些最高档的百货公司。2009年当米歇尔穿着他设计的童话水晶镶缀晚装出席就职典礼舞会的时候，一切发生了变化。吴季刚名声骤起，而他在舞会当晚跟朋友在纽约的公寓小聚，坐在电视前对自己的晚装设计被选中毫不知情，更为这个努力上进的年轻移民的梦幻成功故事添加了格外的戏剧成份。
仅仅几分钟之内，产品代言和实景剧的邀约纷沓而至。要是换了其他人，可能就晕了。可是我越跟吴季刚呆得久，越觉得他的不寻常之处：他没有那种极度进取极具创意的人常带的极度自我膨胀。“不了解我的人觉得我的事业是一条晚装捧起来的，这并没改变我的工作态度和审美观，这只改变了人们怎么看我，我从来没有利用过这种看法去盈利。” 他毫不争拗地说，“我希望别人了解我的作品，而不是我本人，我不觉得自己是多么有意思。当时马上就有书约请我写自传。” 他用那种不可置信的眼神盯着我，似乎在看是否我也认同此事的愚蠢可笑之处。“我没法下笔 - 我才刚展开第一章，还未成形，最多也只能算是一片散文，故事的结尾我还不知道。” 说完，好像要表示自己并不是假清高似地，他加了一句，“当然了，如果现在有人请我去做香水....”
这段时间以来，除了忙于设计2013年米歇尔的第二套晚装和参与其它品牌合作项目（他和兰金合作的化妆品系列将于九月份推出），他仍将眼光放在长远。今天三月的一个下午我去吴季刚的展厅见他，展厅很大（1千平米），一众30多员工，仍是秩序井然，这里摆放着他最新一季的服装和令我垂涎的鞋子和手袋。他扫过一排排的秋装，无论是红黑组合的雪纺珠边褶纱裙，一条鸵鸟毛腰带，一件黑色亮绸镶狐立领风衣，还是一条月白色羊毛合身直腿裤，我惊叹他对每一件作品所倾注的精工细做的心血。很多的露背装和长褶裙的紧身塑形衬里采用几乎绝迹的传统高级礼服的做法，内外都透着无比的华贵。他这种近乎神经质的企求精美在近年来有所放松，他自己也承认，今年的秋装系列里就增添了“一种华丽，不是 Liberace （译者注三) 式的绚丽，而是性感的俏丽。” 他说他梦想着能在一间糕饼店打工，有时压力和外界的期望令他身心疲惫，“好多次，我都觉得‘我做不下去了’.”
也许吧，可是我深信吴季刚会秉持着他那种内敛自持的作风继续下去，为时尚界的翘楚编织霓裳。“我的客户的品味都很刁钻，她们不是因为有名人买我的衣服才来光顾。”他带着一丝自豪地说。
Madame Gres 译者注一：由于地域文化的差异关系,文中涉及时装界大师和品牌的地方一律采用英文原文，不予翻译。
从帕森设计学院 译者注二：其实吴季刚在快毕业是忙于准备首场时装表演，无暇顾及毕业论文，并未正式从学校毕业。吴成名后，帕森设计学院公开向外认可他是本校的毕业生
Liberace 译者注三：美国五六十年代著名钢琴家，娱乐大师，演员。其表演以绚丽多彩的服装和舞台效果著称。他是意大利后裔，他的艺名发音为 Liber-Ah-Chee。 1987年死于爱滋病诱发的疾病。
Liberace 译者注三：美国五六十年代著名钢琴家，娱乐大师，演员。其表演以绚丽多彩的服装和舞台效果著称。他是意大利后裔，他的艺名发音为 Liber-Ah-Chee。 1987年死于爱滋病诱发的疾病。
我为您附上英文原文如下：
For a guy who’s just 30, Jason Wu (who looks even younger in person) has figured out an impressive number of things already. Aside from being able to eyeball any item of clothing and deconstruct how it was made, he knows who he is—“I’m a fashion nerd,” he admits happily over drinks at the Lambs Club in New York City’s midtown one evening in early April—and who he is not: “I’m not trendy. I don’t have a grunge bone in me.” The Taiwan native (he was raised in Vancouver) goes on to clarify: “You won’t see me in a dive bar. It’s not me. I went through my crazy-hair phase and my I’m-not-Asian phase. I had blue eyes and blond hair for a while.” Wu, who, by his own admission, always made his bed at boarding school (one in Massachusetts; one in Connecticut) and got his designing chops as a boy by creating clothes for dolls, has grown into an unnervingly farsighted young man for whom a sense of control is crucial. “Chaos is not for me,” he observes. “If my desk is cluttered, I can’t work.”
If fashion designers, like politicians, can be divided into liberals and conservatives, Wu would definitely put himself on the right end of the spectrum. He makes no apologies for not being a radical—“In my shows, there’s always been a uniformity and neatness”—and disapproves of the instant access that the Internet has brought, enabling people to think they know more about fashion than they really do. “ ‘Two-seasons-ago Prada’ is not a reference,” he states emphatically. “If you can google it, I don’t want it.” Though Wu knows it isn’t “cool” these days, his own approach to design is steeped in references to an earlier period. He invokes Madame Grès, for instance, when explaining how he drapes the pleats on his dresses freehand.
This ultrafocused and unapologetically upmarket sensibility—“If you’re looking for a great white T-shirt, don’t come to me”—has informed Wu’s aesthetic since, fresh out of the Parsons school of design, he showed his first collection of supremely feminine and meticulously crafted clothes in 2006. The company was and is financed with money from Wu’s ongoing position as creative director of Integrity Toys, which makes dolls. His parents, who run a company that produces and exports food products and industrial animal feed, have also provided financial assistance as well as business advice. (His mother, he points out, has never missed a show.)
What was different about Wu right from the start is that he didn’t seem to be experimenting off the consumer’s back; instead, he arrived with a fully formed conception of who wanted his designs—“a certain kind of power woman,” as he describes it, “a strong, confident woman with a certain ‘strictness.’ ” Unlike other young designers, he kept his process—and his influences: Norman Norell, Charles James, Yves Saint Laurent—to himself, sending clothes down the runway that expressed an antiminimalist vision (“I always have a feather or beading or polka dot of some sort”) marked by an almost eerily precocious brio and polish. Aside from his core clientele of affluent and stylish women, there is a neon-lit group he calls “the Wu girls,” including Rachel Weisz, Jaime King, Michelle Williams, Emma Stone, and Julianne Moore—and his partner in this portrait, the ravishing Diane Kruger.
Still, only a few years ago Wu was a name known mostly to industry insiders and the high-end retailers who carried him at Bergdorf Goodman, Neiman Marcus, Saks, Browns in London. All that changed, of course, when Michelle Obama stepped in front of the cameras at the Neighborhood Inaugural Ball in 2009 wearing a crystal-studded fairy tale of a gown he created. The impact on his visibility was enormous; the story of his sitting in front of his TV with a few close friends in his midtown apartment on inauguration night, unaware that his was the dress that had been chosen, added to the built-in drama of a young immigrant whose aspirations and hard work led to undreamed-of success.
Within literally a matter of minutes, the offers—for everything from product endorsements to reality shows—came pouring in. It might have turned someone else’s head, but what’s remarkable about Wu, I discover the more I spend time with him, is how he lacks the egotism one associates with driven, creative types. “People who don’t know me think my career is made of one dress. It didn’t change my work ethic or my aesthetic, but it changed how other people perceived me. I never capitalized on it,” he says, sounding not the least bit defensive. “I want to be known for my work. I don’t want to be known for me; I don’t think I am that interesting. I was offered a book deal right away.” He pauses and looks at me incredulously, to see if I’ve registered the folly of that. “I’m not a writer—I’m still on my first chapter. I’m an article right now; I’m an essay at best. I don’t know how my story ends.” And then, to make clear that he’s not a purist sitting on high, he adds, “Now, if someone had offered me a fragrance deal….”
These days, with a second custom inaugural dress for Michelle Obama, circa 2013, under his belt as well as a slew of new partnerships and licensing arrangements (a collaboration on a makeup collection with Lancôme is due in September), Wu still keeps his eye firmly on the road ahead. One afternoon in March, I meet him at his large (10,000 square feet) showroom, wholly unfrantic despite a staff of 30, which houses his latest season of clothes as well as his mouthwatering collection of shoes and bags. As Wu sifts through a rack of his fall designs, I’m struck by the exacting workmanship that goes into everything he creates, whether a red-and-black chiffon pleated dress with beaded trim, an ostrich feather belt, a black satin funnel-neck trench coat with fox pockets, or a pair of perfectly cut bone-white wool stovepipe pants. Many of the halter and flounce dresses are lined with corsetry, in the way of bygone haute couture, and there is a general sense of inside-out luxury. His refined, just this side of prissy approach has loosened up in recent years, and even he admits to “a certain flamboyance—not Liberace, but sexy” in his fall collection. He says he dreams of working in a pastry shop and admits to sometimes faltering under the pressure and expectation. “So many times,” he says, “I’ve felt ‘I can’t do this.’ ”
Perhaps, but I have every confidence that Wu will continue, in his reserved and exquisitely attuned way, to make clothes for a particular kind of connoisseur of fashion. “The women who buy my clothes have discerning taste,” he says, with quiet pride. “My customer isn’t buying my clothes because famous people wear them.”
