一位對神祕的陰鬱懷有警惕之情的設計師

The word “nice” overcomes a multitude of human complications: People can be rich, so long as they’re nice; they can be lazy at school or useless at work, but if they’re nice, it doesn’t matter. Nice is not the same as “great” or “lovely” or even “sweet” — it’s a category of well-pitched, ordinary decency, and a person who has niceness has everything. To my mind, Sarah Burton is not merely one of the world’s greatest designers, she just happens to be the nicest, and she is about to enjoy the flowering of her life. Once thought of as the diligent one, the silent one, the reliable power behind the dazzle of Alexander McQueen, she has emerged as a person with a devastating music of her own. Season after season, she produces beautiful combinations of the gracious and the eerie, giving us worlds that we didn’t know until we saw them. And now, after some dark winters and several seasons in the media sun, Burton seems free somehow, and ready to stake her claim on the future.

“性格好”這個詞可以超越很多人類的複雜處境：性格好的人可以發財；不愛學習、工作上一無是處也沒問題，只要你性格好就沒關係。“性格好”跟“了不起”、“可愛”、“甜美可親”之類的詞還不一樣，它悅耳動聽、帶着一種低調的體面，性格好的人就能擁有一切。在我看來，莎拉·伯頓(Sarah Burton)不僅是這個世界上最好的設計師，還是個性格頂好的人，如今她正準備享受人生最美好的時期。她曾被視爲勤勉的人，沉默的人，華麗的亞歷山大·麥昆(Alexander McQueen)品牌背後可靠的力量，如今她作爲獨立的個人而崛起，伴隨着摧枯拉朽的背景音樂。一季又一季，她設計的時裝集優雅與怪誕於一身，展現出我們根本無法去想像的嶄新世界。經歷了幾個黑暗的冬天，又經歷了幾季媒體的曝光，伯頓如今似乎自由了，已經準備好去實現自己的目標。

It is four years since Alexander McQueen — or “Lee,” as he was called — who in addition to being Burton’s boss was also her beloved friend and mentor, committed suicide. She was heartbroken — she finished the collection, assumed the role of head designer (which she never sought) and, soon after, in the hot glare of speculation, made the wedding dress of the decade, for the Duchess of Cambridge. To do it all, to bear it, and still be nice, is to exhibit a set of capabilities that adds even more to an already first-rate talent. I didn’t know Sarah Burton, but we got together over several weeks for this story, at her studio, at restaurants, backstage at one of her shows and, finally, at her house in North London. The first time I met her, I noticed how bitten her nails were, how self-doubting she was and how vulnerable. Yet over the weeks, her strength emerged as it does in her work: determined, sure-footed, risky, humorous and ready to open her soul in order to make contact with people. She hadn’t given an interview for almost two years before this one and even then had said very little, and she found herself speaking in a new way. A portrait emerged of a brilliant woman whose nature has been tested under severe conditions. And yet the person I met could laugh for England, making life stories, and her own life story, into an elegant aria of dreaming and believing. There is depth to her niceness, and a niceness to her depth, which has not only quadrupled her company’s fortunes, but which promises a wealth of great work to come.

亞歷山大·麥昆（人們都叫他“李”）在四年前自殺身亡，他是伯頓的老闆，也是她的好朋友和導師。他的辭世令她悲痛欲絕，之後她完成了當季時裝，承擔起首席設計師的職責（她從來沒有謀求過這個位子），很快又在衆目睽睽的密切關注之下爲英國王妃、劍橋公爵夫人設計了婚紗，這可是十年來最重要的一件婚紗。她做了這麼多，承擔了這一切，性格還是那麼好，展現出她的各種綜合能力。她本來就已經是一流人才了，這一切更爲她大大加分。我本來不認識莎拉·伯頓，但是爲了這篇報道，我們在一起呆了幾個星期，我去了她的工作室，和她去餐廳吃飯，去了她秀場的後臺，最後又去了她在北倫敦的家裏。第一次見她的時候，我注意到她咬過手指甲，內心充滿自我懷疑和脆弱。但是過了幾個星期，她的力量開始在工作中顯現出來，她意志堅定、腳踏實地、勇於冒險，有幽默感，而且樂於敞開心扉與人交流。這是她近兩年來第一次接受採訪，此前幾乎沒有在媒體面前說過什麼話，如今她發現自己可以用一種新的方式暢所欲言了。在一個才華橫溢的女人外表之下，有着一個天性飽經嚴酷考驗的人。如今我面前這個女人可以隨意笑談英格蘭，她讓生活變得精彩，把自己的人生變成一曲優雅的詠歎調，謳歌着夢想與信仰。她的“性格好”是有深度的，她的深度又讓她的性格更加好，這種人格魅力不僅讓她的公司利潤增長了四倍，而且肯定會讓她創作出更多傑出的作品。

Burton grew up outside Manchester. Her father was an accountant and her mother was a music teacher. She has four siblings. When she described her childhood to me she spoke a lot about education, about her father feeling that knowledge was something “nobody can take away from you.” On weekends, she and her brothers and sisters would be taken to places such as the Manchester Art Gallery, where she remembers doting on the pre-Raphaelite paintings. When we talked about influences, she sometimes glanced over her own personal things, as if she might always be haunted by the things that once haunted Lee McQueen. “I don’t have that darkness,” she said to me one morning as buses roared past her office on Clerkenwell Road. “I’m not haunted or sad. I don’t have that story in my youth.”

伯頓在曼徹斯特城郊長大，父親是會計，母親是音樂教師。她有四個兄弟姊妹。聊起童年時，她說了很多關於教育的事情。父親覺得知識是“沒有人可以從你身上拿走”的東西。每到週末，她和兄弟姊妹們總會到曼徹斯特藝術館之類的地方去，她還記得在那裏沉醉於拉斐爾前派油畫時的情形。當我們聊起對她產生影響的人或事物時，她經常會望着自己的私人物品，彷彿那些曾經困擾着李·麥昆的東西也在困擾着她。“我心底沒有那種黑暗，”一天早上，她在克拉肯威爾路上的辦公室裏對我說，窗外車水馬龍。“我沒有困擾，也並不悲傷，我的青春時代沒有什麼特別的故事。”

“But some artists are lured towards their opposite,” I said.

“但是有些藝術家會受到與他們相反的東西所吸引，”我說。

“That’s right. Some people think the pre-Raphaelites show a rather insipid way of representing beauty. But the painting of Ophelia [by John Everett Millais] is dark and beautiful at the same time.”

“是的。有些人覺得拉斐爾前派用一種相對平淡的方式來展現美。但（約翰·埃弗裏特·米萊斯[John Everett Millais]創作的）奧菲利亞油畫既陰鬱又美麗。”

“She’s being pulled under by what Shakespeare called ‘her weedy trophies,’ ” I said. “Literally, being sunk and drowned by her dress. That’s not going to happen to you, is it?”

“她被莎士比亞所謂的‘花冠’給拖下去了，”我說，“其實就是被裙子墜下去，淹沒了。你可不會這樣，對不對？”

“No, it’s not,” she said. “Though I couldn’t always swear to it.”

“不，不會，”她說，“但我不能總是這麼保證。”

“Who is your hero?” I asked.

“你心目中的英雄是誰？”我問。

“I think my dad is my hero,” she said. “He works so hard, and he never lies. He believes in family. He’s always been totally fair. And he treats everybody in the family equally.”

“我想爸爸是我的英雄，”她說。“他勤奮工作，從來不說謊，忠於家庭，總是那樣公正，對家裏所有人都一視同仁。”

I looked for the sources of Burton’s memories of childhood, and the pictures she looked at in Manchester offer a host of beautiful, melancholy signals in abundant, colorful cloth: in “La Mort d’Arthur” by James Archer, a woman and a ghost grieve at the feet of the magical king. “The Lady of Shalott” by William Holman Hunt is drawn from Tennyson’s poem about a woman devoted to her loom and her weave who makes a fateful journey to the outside world. Yet Burton says she had a wonderfully happy childhood. The darkness was stored, and she grew up among the flora and fauna of the North — the windswept moors, the Pennine hills, the long green valleys they call the dales — which finds its way relentlessly into the best of her designs. “I’ve always loved nature,” she says. “I grew up in the countryside, and when I was a child I loved to paint and draw — that was my first love, actually. Eventually I was drawing clothes, but at first it was flowers and vegetables. So often we were outside, playing.”

我想尋找伯頓童年記憶的源頭，還有她曾在曼徹斯特觀賞過的那些油畫，它們通過鮮豔繁複的服裝傳遞出美麗而傷感的訊息：在詹姆斯·亞瑟(James Archer)的《亞瑟王之死》(La Mort d’Arthur)中，一個女人和一個鬼魂在那個有魔力的國王腳邊哭泣。威廉·霍爾曼·亨特(William Holman Hunt)的《夏洛特夫人》(The Lady of Shalott)是根據丁尼生(Tennyson)的詩畫成的，她本來是個一生都在織布的女人，如今來到外面的世界，做一次宿命的旅行。但伯頓說，她的童年很快樂。陰暗的東西都被封存起來，她是在北方的花叢與各種動物的陪伴下長大的——微風吹過原野，吹過奔寧山脈，吹過綠油油的山谷——這一切都常常在她最好的作品當中出現。“我一直都熱愛大自然，”她說，“我生長在鄉間，從小就喜歡油畫和素描，它們是我最早喜歡上的東西。最後我開始畫衣服，但是一開始我畫的是花朵和蔬菜。我們經常在戶外玩耍。”

“What was play for you?” I asked.

“你們都玩什麼呢？”我問。

“A lot of dressing up.”

“好多穿衣打扮的遊戲。”

“Were you the boss?”

“你當老大？”

“Yes, always,” Burton said, laughing. “My poor younger sister, she’d get the not-so-good outfits. Fashion wasn’t something in the psyche. I learned very early on you had to go with your heart and it doesn’t matter what people say. My job is quite fearful — I don’t shout the loudest, and I’m quite shy, which was why I was reluctant to throw myself into the public eye. I love beauty, craftsmanship, storytelling and romance, and I probably don’t have the armor to survive the relentless competition that exists in this particular world. But I have my own toughness.”

“對，我總是老大，”伯頓笑着說。“我那可憐的小妹妹，她總是得到不怎麼好的衣服。時尚並不是精神世界裏的東西。我很小就明白，你得全身心投入進去，不要在乎別人怎麼說。我的工作是很可怕的，我並不大聲嚷嚷，我很羞澀，所以我纔不太願意讓自己過多曝光。我喜歡美，喜歡精工細作，喜歡講故事，也喜歡浪漫。在這個充滿殘酷競爭的世界上，我可能不是身披盔甲，但我也有我自己的堅強。”

You see it in her collections. There is nothing fey about them, and her bold, searching intelligence is everywhere. What she makes are couture works of art, full of a wonderful dreamlike phantasmagoria. As if the material, the organza, the silk and the leather, was alive not only to history itself but to her own personal history, the dark and the light. Sometimes her stylistic similarities to McQueen have been levied as a criticism against Burton. “What do people think I was for all those years, the cleaner?” She helped him draw out the savage brilliance that first made the house famous. For such a retiring person, Burton had no problem journeying with him into the madness of the macabre, the rigid body-contoured corsets, the gold-painted fox-skeleton wrap, the bondage pieces, the kimono-style parachute, the antlered bridal gowns. She helped give birth to these designs and is said to have kept the show on the road through many difficult episodes. But she’s ultimately a different kind of artist. It’s hard to see her sharing the dark roots of McQueen’s fetishistic damage obsession. (His famous “Highland Rape” show, which McQueen said was about the rape of Scotland by England, took place before she joined the company.)

這可以從她設計的系列中看出來。它們並不是異想天開的，而是灌注了她的勇氣與探索的智慧。她設計的是服裝的藝術，充滿夢幻般的精美景象。那些面料，透明硬紗、絲綢和皮革，彷彿都是有生命的，不僅反映出歷史，也在講述她人生中的黑暗與光明。有時候她與麥昆風格上的相似性爲她招來批評。“大家以爲那些年我都在幹什麼，掃地？”她協助麥昆創作出最早令品牌成名的絢麗野性。她本來是個內向的人，卻毫不遲疑地跟隨麥昆走過死亡主題的瘋狂、緊貼身體曲線的緊身胸衣、鍍金的狐狸骨架披肩、束縛風格的服裝、和服風格的降落傘服和鹿角婚紗。她幫他設計了那些服裝，據說在很多艱難的時刻，都是她讓走秀繼續舉辦下去。但她畢竟是另一種類型的藝術家。在她身上看不到麥昆那種迷戀毀滅的黑暗根源（麥昆曾說自己著名的“高地強暴”系列是關於英格蘭對蘇格蘭的強暴，這還是她加盟公司之前的事）。

Burton’s darkness is more masked, almost more surprising. It comes unbidden from a place of relative personal optimism and sunniness. Her hauntings are more romantic, and the materials she uses are increasingly different, more celebratory of enduring life and returning nature, despite the brutality at nature’s core. I’d also argue that a larger sense of wearability, and of lightness, of small detail and cool craftsmanship, has matched the house to a new and bigger audience. She is fiercely loyal to Lee McQueen, a fact which brought her, several times during our interviews, past the brink of tears. She loves who he was and wants the company he founded to continually honor his memory, but she has to move on. The work already has moved on, and she knows that is what McQueen himself would have demanded. There is now a feeling, I detect, that she is ready to let him rest, no matter how hard that is. All the great houses had to move beyond their founding geniuses: Coco Chanel died, one must remember, and so did Cristobal Balenciaga and Yves Saint Laurent. Burton took over under traumatic circumstances, and it has taken her this long to be able to truly speak. It took a little work but eventually she opened up about some of the difficulties she’d had. We sat at a large table in her workshop with dresses hanging on every side, organza puffballs, feathered slips. She spoke with love but also with an essential determination.

伯頓內心的黑暗更隱蔽，也更令人驚訝。它從個人樂觀主義和活潑的個性之中不自覺地冒出來。她所執迷的東西更加浪漫，她選用的材料愈來愈多樣化，歌頌着生命的韌性與迴歸自然，儘管自然的本質是殘酷的。我想說，她設計的服裝更加耐穿、更輕盈，細節更精美，做工更考究，更能適應這個品牌不斷增加的新受衆。她對李·麥昆極爲忠誠，在我們的採訪中幾次差點落淚。她愛着他本來的樣子，希望能讓他親手締造的公司一直紀念他，但她也得前進了。她的作品已經開始向前走了，她知道，麥昆本人也希望這樣。我發現她已經準備好，可以放手讓他安眠，不管這有多麼艱難。所有偉大的時裝品牌都得超越自己天才的締造者。要知道，可可·香奈兒(Coco Chanel)已經去世，克里斯托瓦爾·巴倫夏卡(Cristobal Balenciaga)和伊夫·聖·洛朗(Yves Saint Laurent)也一樣。伯頓在公司備受創傷時接管了局勢，她花了這麼長的時間，才能把這一切真正說出口。我們坐在她工作室大大的桌邊，四周掛滿衣服：透明硬紗百褶裙、羽毛薄裙。她的語氣中充滿愛意，但也不乏堅定。

“He would sit here and I would sit there,” she said, pointing to two chairs. “Sometimes he’d call me at 3 o’clock in the morning just to talk, and we had this relationship where . . . I would do anything for him. And then when he died I didn’t want the job, but then everybody was going to leave and I thought, ‘Well, what else are you going to do?’ ” When somebody with that size of talent dies you’re blessed with this legacy, and the legacy gets more and more. “Lee is Marilyn Monroe. He’s James Dean. And to be honest, it’s taken me a while to stop being afraid and see that the company needs me to be at my best.”

“他就坐在這兒，我坐在那兒，”她指着兩張椅子說。“有時候他凌晨三點給我打電話，只是想聊天，我們的關係好到……我什麼都願意爲他做。然後他死了，我不想做這份工作，但當時所有人都想走，我想：‘好吧，那我還能怎麼辦呢？’”一個這樣有才華的人離去之後，你會受惠於他所遺下的東西，這份遺產還會日益增加。“李就像瑪麗蓮·夢露(Marilyn Monroe)，就像詹姆斯·迪恩(James Dean)。誠實地說，我花了好長時間纔不再憂慮，覺得公司確實需要我保持在最佳狀態。”

“Did you feel angry at him?”

“你生他的氣嗎？”

“Why?”

“爲什麼生氣？”

“Because he left you. Because he destroyed himself. Because you had to finish the collection. Because you had to take over. And maybe nobody gave you permission to be angry?”

“因爲他離開了你。因爲他毀掉了自己。因爲你得完成那個系列。因爲你得接管一切。或者沒有人允許你去憤怒？”

“I’m not sure,” she said. “But the hardest thing is that I never really understood the pressure he was under. He could deal with all the difficult characters just by telling them to shut up. But I’m not like that. Only now am I beginning to accept the differences between us, and it’s fine. He was a painter who worked in massive brush strokes and I’m a person with tiny brush strokes.”

“我不確定，”她說。“但最艱難的是，我從來沒能真正理解他所承擔的壓力。他能應付所有難搞的人，只是讓他們閉嘴就行了。我可不是這樣的。到現在我纔開始接受我們之間的不同，這樣很好。他是大手筆的畫家，而我則是細描。”

The media has been on her case since that sad day in 2010. Many designers with less talent would have crumbled under the pressure, but Burton, despite all the fear and all the doubt and all the grief, has established her aesthetic. She speaks a lot off the record and doesn’t want to raise her voice, but eventually she does. “Lee and I weren’t cut from the same cloth, but we often cut into the same cloth, so it shouldn’t surprise people, after all these years, that we shared some basic creative instincts. I think I’ve probably spent too much time expressing an anxiety about Lee’s influence, but that’s coming to an end now and a new period is beginning. I loved Lee, but he is gone. And the decisions I will make for this company have already been bold, I hope, and strong, and driven by a creative integrity that is finding its feet in new ways every day. Every great design house knows that legacy cannot be allowed to be a curse and must be a wonderful opportunity for invention. That’s where I am. That’s who we are.”

自從2010年那個悲傷的日子以來，媒體一直都在騷擾她。面對這麼大的壓力，換了不那麼有才華的設計師就要被壓垮了，但是伯頓儘管內心充滿恐懼、懷疑與悲傷，還是奠定了自己的美學。她私下裏說了很多東西，並不願意擡高嗓門，但到最後她還是說出來了。“李和我並不是用同樣的料子做成的，但我們的確經常用同樣的材料做衣服，所以這麼多年以來，如果說我們有共同的基本創作本能，那麼人們也不應該感到奇怪。我想我可能是花了太多時間去表達李的影響力所帶來的焦慮，但如今這已經結束了，新的階段開始了。我愛李，但他已經去了。我希望自己爲公司的未來所作出的決定是大膽有力的，是由誠信的創意所驅動，每一天都以新的方式找到自己的根基。所有偉大的設計品牌都知道，遺產不應當成爲一種詛咒，而必須成爲創新的精彩機遇。我就是處在這樣的階段，我們就是這樣的。”

It’s worth remembering the motto at Withington Girls’ School, where Burton was a happy pupil in the 1980s: “ad lucem” — toward the light. That is the general direction of her life and her talent. Her husband, David Burton, is also her best friend, and they have twin girls. If you’re available for optimism, as she is, then the movement toward the light will come naturally, with all the opposing shadows existing like ghosts on a glass negative. In her fall show for Alexander McQueen, Burton set all this to life, like a magician of selfhood. A strange, misty moorland — not unconnected to the landscape of her childhood — was the setting for the combination of beautiful tailoring and wild imaginings that characterize the house. There was a sense of romanticism-in-crisis, of the Bronte sisters, of Heathcliff haunted by the cold hand of death scratching at his window, of owls, dreams and the poems of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, whom Burton cites. The dresses came with capes, fur hoods, bell sleeves and delicate, small embroidery, frilled and frayed hemlines. Clothes like these don’t make themselves, and legacy doesn’t make them either. Some designers are driven not by what is flamboyant in them but by what is recessive. Burton brings to the McQueen brand an English tendency toward dark pleasure as opposed to dark pain. She is a prettier designer than many, but always alert to the mysteriously perverse.

20世紀80年代，伯頓在威辛頓女子學校度過了快樂的小學時光，她還記得學校的校訓：“ad lucem”——迎着光明。她的人生與創作也大致是朝着這個方向。她的丈夫大衛·伯頓(David Burdon)是她最好的朋友，他們有一對雙胞胎女兒。如果你像她那樣充滿樂觀精神，一切就會自然而然地走向光明，身後的那些陰影就和顯影底片上的幽靈沒什麼兩樣。在伯頓爲亞歷山大·麥昆推出的秋冬時裝秀上，她爲這一切賦予了生命，就像一個展現出自己人格的魔法師。秀臺背景是一片霧氣瀰漫的奇異荒原，彷彿連接着她的童年風景，時裝有着精心的裁剪和品牌標誌性的瘋狂想像力。有種危難時刻的浪漫主義，就像勃朗特(Bronte)姊妹，就像希斯克厲夫(Heathciliff)，被那隻在他窗口抓撓的冰冷的死亡之手所困擾，就像貓頭鷹、夢境與塞繆爾·泰勒·柯勒律治(Samuel Taylor Coleridge)的詩句，伯頓曾經引用過他的詩。這些裙子有斗篷、皮毛兜帽、鐘形袖和精美的小小刺繡，還有流蘇和做舊的底邊。這樣的衣服不是憑空而來的，也不是來自遺產。有些設計師被它們內部隱含的東西吸引住了，而不是它們表面上張揚的東西。伯頓爲麥昆品牌帶來的是一絲英國式的黑暗歡愉，而不是黑暗的痛苦。她比許多設計師要聰明，但一直都對那種神祕的變態懷有警惕之情。

Not everyone has obvious demons. With Lee it was skulls, shipwrecks, hospital inmates and birds of prey. But Burton’s instinct might be more subtle. Her instinct might be to see the fly in the ointment, the crack in the teacup, the little details that make the ordinary strange.

不是所有人心中都有明顯的惡念。李內心的魔鬼就是那些骷髏、海難、醫院病人和猛禽。但伯頓的本能或許更加微妙。她的本能或許就是看到陷在油膏中的蒼蠅、茶杯上的裂縫，以及種種化平凡變爲奇異的微小細節。

“When I went to Saint Martins” — the art school she attended — “a lot of the people there were these flamboyant characters. I thought, ‘God, I’m not like them.’ I thought, ‘What’s going on? I’m really normal.’ But my own demon is the fear of failure. My obsessional addiction is work and there’s a possible twistedness in always putting myself last, you know?”

“我在聖馬丁上學的時候，”——那是一所藝術學校——“很多人性格都很張揚。我想，‘天哪，我跟他們可不一樣。怎麼回事？我真的是個正常人。’但我內心的魔鬼就是對失敗的恐懼，我對工作非常執着，而且也總有轉折點發生，讓我堅持下去，你知道。”

“Were you never really interested in being a star designer?”

“你是不是根本就不想當明星設計師？”

“Honestly, no. There have been times when, if I could have disappeared from this industry I would have. I had to battle with it. I don’t look like a fashion person, I’m not cool, and I always just loved people who are good at what they do. I’m not interested in going to parties. I hate having my picture taken. When the Met Ball is happening I want to go through the back door. When the giant McQueen show was on there” — which became the biggest draw in the history of the museum — “I didn’t want to go up the red carpet because . . . it’s embarrassing. I’m shy. When celebrities tap me on the shoulder I think they’re asking me to move out of the way. And you know: It doesn’t bother me. I smile about it with my husband, we’re secure. And to me the only story that is worth telling is the story of the work.”

“誠實地說，我不想。有時候我想，如果我能從這個行業消失就好了。我得和這個想法對抗。我看上去就不像時尚人士，我一點也不酷，我只喜歡那些擅長做自己工作的人。我對派對之類沒興趣。我討厭拍照片。大都會博物館慈善舞會上，我只想從後門溜走。麥昆品牌舉辦大型展覽的時候”——這是大都會博物館史上最吸引人的盛事——“我根本不想去走紅毯，因爲……這讓人尷尬。我很害羞。名人們拍着我的肩膀，我覺得他們可能是要我讓路吧。你知道：這並不讓我困擾，我和丈夫一起微笑面對，我們很安全。對於我來說，唯一值得一提的就是關於工作的事情。”

Someone who works with Burton told me about the pressure she came under to accept the job at McQueen. She was approached for the creative directorship of another major fashion house at the same time and this person told her she’d regret not accepting the offer. “You’ll always be haunted at McQueen,” she said. After Lee’s suicide, the co-worker remembers Burton burning a candle in Lee’s room and leaving off the lights: “There was just this candle. Sarah had this giant decision to make. And we were all relieved when she took the job. We always knew she had a whole vision of her own that helped Lee’s vision but was peculiar to her.”

伯頓的同事和我說過她同意接替麥昆工作時的壓力。當時她也在與另一個大品牌接觸，考慮接受該品牌創意總監的工作，接受我採訪的這個人當時對她說，如果她不接手麥昆，一定會後悔。“麥昆會永遠縈繞在你心頭，”她說。這位同事還說，李自殺以後，伯頓在他的房間裏關掉了燈，爲他點燃一支蠟燭：“對着這支蠟燭，莎拉做了這個重大決定。聽說她接手這個工作，我們都鬆了一口氣。我們都知道她有自己完整的想法，她會對李的想法有幫助，但她的想法是完全屬於她自己的。”

Burton told me she was relieved to be able to talk again about the basics of design and inspiration. She felt she’d been tossed around in a sea of media obsessions — the hunger for news about her relationship with the royals still persists, and a few days before we first met, the media camped on her doorstep again, convinced she had designed Kim Kardashian’s wedding dress, which she hadn’t. With me she became more relaxed, saying it was nice to be back on dry land, talking about ideas, trying to define her way of doing things in a job she loves.

伯頓告訴我，能再次談起設計與靈感的基礎，讓她覺得很寬慰。她覺得自己在媒體的汪洋大海中掙扎——人們還在渴望瞭解她和皇室之間的關係，我們第一次見面之前幾天，媒體再一次在她家門口紮營，認定是她爲金·卡戴珊(Kim Kardashian)設計了婚紗，其實並不是她。她在我面前顯得更放鬆一點，說能夠從媒體的海洋中爬上來真是太好了，她還談起設計創意，她熱愛這份工作，並試圖給自己做工作的方式下個定義。

“What have clothes to do with emotion?” I asked.

“服裝和情感有關係嗎？”我問。

“Oh, everything,” she said. “They can describe a moment in your life or a feeling that is completely instilled in you. Feeling the texture of the material and seeing how it moves on the body, well, that is emotion — it’s emotion-in-motion. It might interest you to know that the clothes that sell best in our shops is the most extreme stuff — people want to express something about themselves and they find an enabler in us, and that’s emotional.”

“啊，大有關係，”她說。“它們可以用來描述你生命中的某個時刻，或是一種完全滲入你內心的感覺。撫摸面料的質材，看着它怎樣在身體上移動，那就是感情，是一種處於興奮狀態的感情。知道店裏賣得最好的衣服是你設計出的最極端的東西，這讓人興奮——人們想表達關於他們自身的東西，他們覺得我們的服裝能做到這一點，這就是感情。”

One of the reasons Burton has shied away from the media is because certain quarters of it have pursued her. Her biggest project to date, making the royal wedding dress in 2011, meant the press stalked her for months, and the stress of trying to keep the secret and trying to deal with bogus stories came fast on the heels of Lee’s death. The dress was universally admired and it made Alexander McQueen a household name, but there are critics who say she has been too silent. “I had no idea it would be as big as it was. Only the night before, seeing all the photographers outside the abbey, did I think, ‘Oh, my God. This is massive.’ ”

伯頓遠離媒體的原因之一是有些媒體一直在追逐她。她迄今做過的最大項目就是2011年爲皇室設計婚紗，所以媒體跟蹤了她好幾個月。李剛剛去世沒有多久，保密的壓力與應付假新聞的壓力就隨之而來。最後那件婚紗廣受喜愛，令亞歷山大·麥昆成爲家喻戶曉的名字，但也有人批評她太過沉默。“我沒想到這件事會變得這麼大。一直到前一天晚上，看到路邊到處都是攝影師，我纔想，‘天哪，這麼大的陣勢。’”

When I first brought the dress up with Burton, she wanted to wave the subject away. But during our second meeting, she appeared resolved to put the matter to rest. “I know we live in a culture obsessed with fame,” she said, “but I happen to believe privacy is a virtue, and the relationship I have with my clients is private. Some people like to think I’ve been too shy or that I’m afraid to speak up about the happy experience I had creating the Duchess of Cambridge’s wedding dress, but I can tell you that is nonsense. I have never been a shrinking violet or a person who is ruled by fear. I loved making the dress, I loved adapting my ideas to suit the person and the occasion, and we put our hearts into it. I respect the intimate nature of that lovely project and I respect the friendships that were forged during it. This is the era of blab, but we’re strong-minded here at McQueen, we always have been, and we’re proud of what we do. There are people in the media who will always want to invent sinister reasons for people’s discretion, but an instinctive, intelligent, imaginative young woman’s wish for a beautiful wedding dress — or any kind of dress — is the most natural thing in the world. And I was honored to pick up the challenge and always will be.”

我第一次和伯頓提起那件婚紗時，她還想擺脫這個話題。但是第二次見面的時候，她就決心給這件事做個了斷了。“我知道自己生活在迷戀名聲的文化之中，”她說，“但是我也相信尊重隱私是一種美德，我和客戶之間的關係就是隱私。有人覺得我過於羞澀，或者我不敢談起給劍橋公爵夫人設計婚紗的愉快體驗，但是我可以告訴你，這是胡說。我從來不是一個羞怯的人，也不會被恐懼所支配。我喜歡做那件婚紗，我喜歡調整自己的想法，去適合當時的人與場合，我們全心全意投入在裏面。那是一個愉快的項目，它的本質是親密的，我尊重它，我也尊重在那個項目中結成的友誼。這是一個八卦滿天飛的時代，但是在麥昆，我們有着堅定的意志，我們一直都是這樣，我們爲我們所做的一切感到自豪。有些媒體的人總想爲別人的動機編造險惡的理由，但是一個純真、聰明、富於想象力的年輕姑娘想穿一件漂亮的婚紗——或者其他什麼衣服——這是世界上最自然的事情。我很榮幸能夠接受這個挑戰，我會永遠爲此感到榮幸。”

So there you have it. Does that sound like a frightened artist to you? Like someone playing second fiddle to anyone? She made the most famous dress in the world and survived to tell us that the tale is hers. It provides a perfect antidote to the prurience of our times and shows Burton to be willing not only to take her values into her workplace, into her home life, but now, after a season of rain, into the sunny uplands of her public image.

所以就是這樣了。聽上去像是個膽小怕事的藝術家嗎？像是一個總在打下手的人說的話嗎？她設計了這個世界上最著名的一件衣服，而且還活下來給我們講了她的故事。這對於我們這個浮躁的時代不啻爲一劑解藥，也表明現在的伯頓不僅願意在工作場所和家庭生活中顯示自己的價值，經歷了漫長的雨季，如今她願意走向陽光明媚的高處，展示自己的公衆形象。

When I popped backstage to see her after her recent men’s wear show in London, there was a queue of international glamour types lining up to praise what she’d done. It was quite a show — long, lean coats with flashes of red lining, made in Prince of Wales check or houndstooth, with abstract Kabuki patterns lifting them out of England — but she waved off the praise, then smiled broadly when the elderly mother of the show’s hairstylist came up. “Oh, you’re the belle of the ball, so I won’t keep you,” the lady said. “But how’s the kids? Great. Well, let’s be seeing you before long, darling — you’re looking lovely.”

前不久她在倫敦舉行了一場男裝發佈會，之後我來到後臺，一大堆國際名人排着隊爭相讚美她。這場秀非常精彩——瘦長的外套，有着閃亮的紅色鑲邊，用威爾士王子格紋呢或狗牙花呢製成，抽象的藝妓風格花紋又使得它們彷彿遠離英倫。但她揮揮手，不去理會那些讚美，只是對一位老媽媽露出真誠的笑容，她是這場秀的髮型師的媽媽，特意趕來看走秀，“啊，你是女主角，我不耽誤你了，”這位老夫人說。“但是孩子們還好嗎？好吧，好吧，希望很快能再見面，親愛的——你真美。”

“Would you sooner come back as a butterfly or a bee?” I asked her.

“你是會變成蝴蝶還是蜜蜂，很快飛回來？”我問她。

“Oh, a bee,” she said, her Northern accent suddenly obvious. “I think I’m more of a worker than I am a painted lady.” Everybody who knows Burton admires her, and many of them have waited patiently for her to speak out without being hesitant, to embrace the success she’s having, and to let the light of Alexander McQueen shine equally on the past and the present. She now has her own legacy to think about. “We’re in the enchantment business,” she said. “Fashion will never stagnate so long as there are teams of people willing to tackle the soul of the culture. That’s what we do here at McQueen, that’s what we’ve always done.”

“啊，變成蜜蜂，”她說，她的北方口音突然變得很明顯。“我覺得我更像工蜂，不是花蝴蝶。”認識伯頓的人都崇拜她，很多人都在耐心等待，希望她可以毫不遲疑地開口發言，去享受自己已經取得的成功，讓亞歷山大·麥昆的光芒既照亮過去，也點亮現在。如今，她已經可以考慮自己的創作遺產了。“我們置身於一個迷人的行業，”她說。“時尚永遠不會停滯太久，總會有成羣的人樂於觸動文化的靈魂。我們在麥昆所做的就是這樣的事，我們一直都是如此。”