奢华珠宝，质朴在心

奢华珠宝，质朴在心

It’s fitting that a jeweler should live in a gem, and the Paris home of Marie-Hélène de Taillac, a penthouse apartment with views over the Parisian rooftops toward Saint-Sulpice, is a lovely one: simple, clean and understated, and in a constant dance with light. If you’ve ever dreamed of an Amélie-style garret sprinkled with a generous pinch of sophistication — and who hasn’t? — here it is, perched on the top floor of a building near de Taillac’s shop in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, complete with a terrace and climbing magnolias. “I love watching the clouds,” she says. “That is why I love this flat. In the summer we are out on the terrace, and in the winter we are by the fire.”

珠宝匠就应该住在闪亮的地方，这样才相得益彰，而玛丽-埃莱娜·德塔亚克(Marie-Hélène de Taillac)在巴黎的家——可以俯瞰远至圣叙尔比斯教堂(Saint-Sulpice)的一片巴黎屋顶的顶楼公寓，就是个魅力十足的住处：简单、整洁、质朴，而且流光飞舞。如果你曾梦想住在一间“爱美丽风格”(Amélie-style，出自2001年的法国电影《天使爱美丽》——译注)的小阁楼，布置着很多精美绝伦的陈设——谁没想过呢?——这就是了。此间公寓坐落在一栋大厦的顶层，靠近德塔亚克位于圣日耳曼德佩区(Saint-Germain- des-Prés)的珠宝店，公寓还带有一个阳台，种着爱攀爬的木兰花。“我爱看云，”她说，“所以才这么喜爱这套公寓。夏天里，我们可以在阳台上乘凉，而在冬天我们就守着火炉。”

The apartment, where she lives with her young son, Edmond, is perfectly compact, rather like being on a boat; a steep, narrow rail-less staircase leads to a shower room made of slatted wood, just like that on a Mediterranean yacht, on the way to de Taillac’s bedroom. A spare refuge from all the color and sparkle of her dazzling shop, her bedroom is pared down, as if to allow more space for her creative flights. Her bed is covered with a large Kashmir Loom blanket, and the walls are painted white, one side of the room is lined with windows and the other with cupboards filled with her clothes, in a rainbow of candy shades.

这套公寓虽然狭小拥挤，却也井井有条，德塔亚克和她年幼的儿子埃德蒙(Edmond)住在这里，就像生活在一条船上;爬上陡峭、狭窄、没有栏杆的楼梯，可以看见一间用板条搭建的淋浴室，很像地中海游艇上的那种;再往前走，就来到了德塔亚克的卧室。这间卧室和她那色彩绚烂又璀璨夺目的珠宝店相比，简直像处狭小的避难所。德塔亚克缩小了卧室的空间，似乎是为了给别具一格的楼梯留出更多位置。她的床上铺着一张宽大的克什米尔织毯，四面墙涂成了白色，房间一侧是一字排开的窗户，而另一侧有一排衣橱，里面挂满了糖果色的衣服，像彩虹一样层次分明。

Everywhere, splashes and pops of color draw the eye. Downstairs in the sitting room, chairs upholstered in turquoise surround a fireplace, over which de Taillac has placed a blue convex mirror and candlesticks holding green apple, watermelon and grape-hued candles, and among the cards and invitations is a divine jeweled mobile, one of her own designs. “It is very nice to wear jewelry, but it is very nice to have it around in the house too,” she says. Along those lines, she once made a kaleidoscope for Barneys and sells beautiful rock crystal domed boxes studded with cabochon jewels at her store. They are reminiscient of a time, the 1930s perhaps, when people would go to Cartier to have things made, endless boxes and dishes and things, each one prettier and more fun than the last.

房间里到处都是挥洒与跳跃的色彩，颇为吸引眼球。下楼来到客厅里，壁炉边围着几把椅子，包着绿松石色的椅套。德塔亚克在壁炉上方装了一面蓝色的凸面镜，又放了几支烛台，上面插着苹果绿、西瓜红和葡萄紫色的蜡烛。在一堆卡片和请柬中间，有一部装饰着漂亮珠宝的手机，也是她自己的设计作品之一。“珠宝用来佩戴当然很好，但是用来点缀屋子也很不错。”她说。出于这类想法，她有一次为巴尼斯纽约精品店(Barneys)做了一个万花筒，还在自己店里出售一些漂亮的无色水晶制拱顶小盒，上面镶有抛光的宝石。这些盒子容易令人回忆起往昔，或许是在20世纪30年代吧，人们都会去卡地亚(Cartier)定制东西。店里有数不清的盒子、盘子以及诸如此类的东西，每一件都比前面看到的更漂亮、更有趣。

Across the room from the fireplace, the dining room wall is covered in a silver de Gournay wallcovering, featuring a tree of life and masses of birds and butterflies. “It came from an old Chinese paper that the designer Jane Pendry found in San Francisco,” de Taillac says. “She took it to de Gournay and they copied it for me. But when it arrived I didn’t like the color of the birds — they weren’t bright enough!” She invited a friend to come over and repaint them in more vivid hues. “He made them more mad, expanded their tails and changed the breed of the birds,” she adds. “Acid yellow and orangy red and the flowers too — we added color!” De Taillac is a great advocate of customizing things to suit one’s own personality, a spirit that characterizes her shop as well. “I like to conceive the jewelry, and then someone makes it their own with the way they wear it,” she says. It’s an interesting notion, considering that her aesthetic is so strong, but the spirit of invention is infectious.

正对着壁炉的餐厅墙壁上，铺着银色的帝家丽(de Gournay)壁纸，上面画着一棵生命之树，以及成群的飞鸟与蝴蝶。“这幅画来自一张古老的中国图画，设计师简·彭德雷(JanePendry)在旧金山发现了它，”德塔亚克说，“她把这幅画拿到帝家丽，请他们为我复制了一份。但是当我拿到画时，并不喜欢这些鸟的颜色——它们不够鲜艳!”于是她请来一位朋友，为那些鸟涂上了更艳丽的色彩。“他让这些鸟更加迷人了，还把鸟尾画长，改变了它们的品种，”她补充道，“有柠檬黄和橘红色，我们为花朵也添了些颜色!”德塔亚克是个人定制产品的坚定拥护者，这也是她的珠宝店所具有的精神特色。“我喜欢构思出一款珠宝的大概，然后让它的拥有者以自己独有的方式来佩戴，使其真正成为他们自己的东西，”她说。这个观点十分有趣。想想看，她的审美风格如此强势，但她的创造精神却是这样的有感染力。

I always wanted to have shops in Paris, Tokyo and New York,” de Taillac says, sitting at her 1970s glass and chrome dining table, a find from the famous Saint-Ouen flea market in Paris. She has just opened her first store in New York, thereby completing the triptych. (Tokyo was first, in 2003, and Paris came next, in 2004.) While the three locations are very different, reflecting not only their locales but de Taillac’s mood at the time of their design, they are all part of her charming realm. She has that wonderful, rather French talent for combining high quality with the whimsical. Her shop on Rue de Tournon is so pretty and joyful, painted powder blue, that it is easy to forget it is a purveyor of such precious and extravagant items as a $52,000 diamond necklace or a $15,000 swivel ring. The alluringly playful window display, designed by de Taillac’s niece, shows a row of brightly colored feathery parrots with one of her trademark necklaces of multicolored briolette gems garlanded between their beaks. In the New York shop, meanwhile, the walls are covered in fabric, a blue cotton printed in India with the MHT logo in gold. The effect is lovely, especially as reflected in the space’s many mirrors, inspired by recent trips to Marie-Antoinette’s boudoir at Versailles.

“我一直想在巴黎、东京和纽约开店，”德塔亚克说，她正坐在一张上世纪70年代的玻璃及铬合金材质的餐桌旁，这张桌子是她从巴黎著名的圣旺 (Saint-Ouen)跳蚤市场上找到的。不久前，她在纽约的第一家店也开张了，终于完成了这幅“三联画”(她于2003年在东京开了第一家店，紧接着 2004年又在巴黎开了一家)。由于三家店的所在地迥然不同，并且德塔亚克在为它们做设计时的心境也不一，这三家店可谓是风格迥异。虽然如此，它们也都是德塔亚克的“魅力王国”的一部分。她有那么一种法国式的神奇天赋，能把绝佳的品质与异想天开的风格结合在一起。她在(巴黎)托侬大街(Rue de Tournon)开的那家店是浅灰蓝色调的，显得漂亮又明快，令人简直一不小心就会忘记，店里在售的都是些多么珍贵而奢华的东西，比如5.2万美元(约合人民币32万元)的钻石项链，或是1.5万美元(约合人民币9.2万元)的可旋转戒指。店铺那迷人有趣的橱窗，是德塔亚克的侄女(或外甥女)设计的，一排毛色鲜艳的鹦鹉协力衔着德塔亚克的招牌设计之作，一条由椭圆形多彩宝石制成的项链，就像挂在鸟喙间的花环。而在纽约的店里，墙面覆着一层织物，那是在印度印染的一种蓝色棉布，上面带有金色的MHT标志。这一装修效果非常美妙，尤其是在店内多面镜子的反射之下。其设计灵感来自她最近参观凡尔赛宫的玛丽·安托瓦内特(Marie-Antoinette，法国路易十六的王后——译注)闺房的经历。

De Taillac started her business in 1996 with $10,000 and remains the owner. (Her three sisters are her partners.) “If I had a backer, it would be a nightmare,” she says with a laugh. The desire to start something of her own came after working in London in the fashion industry, first with the cult costume jewelers Butler & Wilson in the 1980s, followed by the jeweler Dinny Hall and then the fashion designer Victor Edelstein, famous for dressing the Princess of Wales. But it was Philip Treacy who inspired her to find her own passion. “He was living and breathing for the hat, and I realized I wanted to be as passionate as him,” she recalls. So, she took a sabbatical and went traveling in Asia. On a visit to the Gem Palace in Jaipur, India, she started observing the stonecutters at work. “I spent many hours there,” she says. “I could design a shape and they could make it.” What followed was a meeting of minds between de Taillac and Munnu Kasliwal, a jeweler and visionary who before his death last year at just 54 single-handedly changed the way Westerners regarded Indian jewelry.

1996年，德塔亚克拿出1万美元(约合人民币6.15万元)开始创业，至今仍是这桩生意的所有者(她的三个姐妹是合伙人)。“如果我有一个赞助人，那就会是场恶梦。”她笑着说。在伦敦时尚界工作了一段时间后，她开始生出想自己创造点什么的念头。上世纪80年代，她先是在一家邪典扮装服饰珠宝公司 Butler & Wilson工作，接着是珠宝商Dinny Hall，再后来是因为给威尔士公主设计礼服而出名的时尚设计师维克多·埃德尔斯坦(Victor Edelstein)。但是最终启发她找到自己爱好的人，却是“帽子大师”菲利普·崔西(Philip Treacy)。“他为帽而生，为帽而活。而我意识到，自己也想像他一样那么有热情，”她回忆说。于是，她安排了一段时间休假，去了亚洲旅行。在印度斋浦尔(Jaipur)的珠宝商Gem Palace参观期间，她开始仔细观察那些工作中的宝石加工者。“我在那里待了很长时间，”她说，“我可以设计出形状，然后请他们做出来。”接下来就是德塔亚克与蒙努·卡什利瓦尔(Munnu Kasliwal)之间的一拍即合。这位具有远见卓识的珠宝商在去年刚刚年仅54岁时就英年早逝了。但此前，他仅凭一己之力就改变了西方人对印度珠宝的看法。

“Munnu was into doing something new,” she recalls. “He could have said, ‘We are busy and don’t have time,’ but he didn’t; we had the same creative vision. He was so lively and full of life. He said we can do whatever we set our minds to.”

“蒙努正要着手做什么新东西，”她回忆说，“他本来可以说‘我们很忙，没有时间’，但是他没有;我们对于创造拥有同样的看法。他是那么的活跃，充满生命力。他说，我们可以做任何我们内心想做的东西。”

There is a wonderful simplicity to de Taillac’s life and work, as well as a calm energy. Chalk it up to the fact that she meditates for an hour each day, or to her deep ardor for the enchanting corner of Paris she calls home. “It’s so beautiful here,” she says. “There is not an ugly thing for 10 blocks around.”

在工作和生活中，德塔亚克都保持着一种美好的质朴之心，而且很有定力。也许这可归因于她每天冥想一小时的习惯，或是那个她最爱的地方——被她称为“家”的一个巴黎的迷人角落。“这里太美了，”她说，“方圆十个街区之内，看不到一件丑陋的东西。”

Or maybe it’s her work with ancient stones that keeps de Taillac so grounded. Gems, she believes, have special properties: fire opal for fertility, smoky quartz for depression. “We live in a world ruled by money, but it is not all about that,” she says. “They are thousands of years in the earth before making a stone. It takes time to make something beautiful. Gems are the stars of the earth.”

又或许，正是她那打磨古老石头的活计，让德塔亚克保持了如此平和的心态。她相信宝石都带有某种特别的属性：比如火蛋白石(fire opal)意味着繁殖，而烟晶(smoky quartz)能消除抑郁。“虽然我们生活在一个金钱统治的世界，但它并不是世界的全部内涵，”她说，“在地球上，要经过上千年时间，才能形成一块石头。美好之物的产生总是需要花时间。宝石，就是地球上的星星。”