走进女王的衣橱：英国王室礼服什么样

It was an unusually cold March day here, which is just how royals from Henry VIII to Princess Diana would want it to preserve their wardrobes.

那是三月里英国异常寒冷的一天，不论是亨利八世还是戴安娜王妃，皇室成员们一定希望在这样的天气里保留自己的衣橱。

After all, some of their belongings are among the approximately 10,000 pieces of the Royal Ceremonial Dress Collection, restored and archived in the equally chilly interiors of Hampton Court Palace in this London suburb.

毕竟，他们的一些物品位列皇家礼服收藏展(Royal Ceremonial Dress Collection)上的大约一万件展品之中，被复原并存放在伦敦郊外同样冰冷的汉普顿宫(Hampton Court Palace)内。

“We have things that relate to our palaces,” said Adam Budhram, media and public relations manager of Historic Royal Palaces, an independent charity that manages Hampton Court and five other historic sites. “It starts with a monarch and goes down strata by strata, to the servants, to livery dress. It’s a lovely thread and a nice way to tell the stories.”

“我们的物品与我们的宫殿有关，”历史皇家宫殿(Historic Royal Palaces)媒体和公关经理亚当·布达拉姆(Adam Budhram)说，这是一个负责管理汉普顿宫以及其他五个古迹的独立慈善机构。“从君主开始，一级级往下，到仆人，到仆从制服。这是个很好的线索，是个讲故事的好方法。”

The collection ranges from decorative hatpins to King George IV’s 1821 velvet, ermine and gold coronation robe, so heavy it requires six people to move.

藏品多种多样，有装饰性的女帽饰针，也有1821年乔治四世国王的天鹅绒貂皮镶金加冕礼袍，重到需要六个人才搬得动。

And, with another royal wedding coming up in May, it also holds a footnote of interest: a sample shoe that Raine London produced for Princess Elizabeth’s consideration as the future monarch planned her wedding attire in 1947.

而且，随着另一场皇室婚礼即将在五月到来，展览中还有一个有趣的补充：1947年，在这位未来的君主筹备自己的婚礼服装时，伦敦Raine品牌为伊丽莎白公主制作的样鞋。

At Hampton Court, Eleri Lynn, the collection’s curator, donned a coat before leading a visitor from her heated office down stony hallways, through peaked Tudor archways and past diamond-paned casement windows to one of 12 rooms devoted to archiving or conserving the collection.

在汉普顿宫，该展览的策展人埃莱丽·林恩(Eleri Lynn)在带领一名游客从她温暖的办公室走向冰凉的走廊之前披上了一件大衣，他们穿过尖顶的都铎式拱门，走过镶钻的窗扇，朝着12间专门用于储存或保护该系列展品的其中一个房间走去。

The first small room was filled with file cabinets, both vertical and horizontal, with racks mounted on the cabinet tops. Clothes that can be hung are zippered into bags made of Tyvek, a durable, synthetic paper-like material that is difficult to tear (“It’s waterproof, acid-free and dust-repellent,” Ms. Lynn said). Items that are too fragile to be hung are wrapped in acid-free tissue paper and placed in the horizontal cabinets or in large boxes.

第一个小房间装满了文件柜，直立和平放的都有，储藏柜上方堆满了架子。可以悬挂的衣服被封入了特卫强(Tyvek)制成的袋子中，它是一种类似纸质的人造耐用材料，很难撕裂(“这是防水、无酸、防尘的，”林恩说)。过于易损而不能被悬挂的物品用无酸薄纸包好，放在直立的储藏柜或大箱子里。

The vertical files hold prints, sketches, photographs and documents like letters and diaries related to royal garments. One drawer is filled with sketches by the designer Ian Thomas of possible outfits for Queen Elizabeth, including a green wool suit she eventually wore to horse races. On some of the sketches the queen had written “yes” or “yes, but with longer sleeves.”

直立的文件柜里有打印件、草图、照片和文件，比如与皇家服装有关的信件和日记。其中一个抽屉里装满了设计师伊恩·托马斯(Ian Thomas)为伊丽莎白女王设计的服装，包括她最终在赛马会上穿的一身绿色羊毛套装。女王在有些草图上写着“可以”，或“可以，但是袖子再长些”。

(While the collection does have the drawings, the queen’s shoe sample and some garments she has worn, most of her wardrobe is part of the Royal Collection, a vast holding of art, decorative pieces and clothing held by the queen as sovereign.)

(虽然这些收藏中有图纸、女王的鞋样以及她穿过的一些衣服，但她的大部分服装属于皇家收藏基金会[Royal Collection]，该基金会持有属于女王的大量艺术品、装饰品和服装。)

Ms. Lynn climbed a ladder to reach a clothing rack and chose one of the Tyvek bags. Inside was a dapper mustard and brown houndstooth-checked double-breasted suit once owned by the Duke of Windsor to wear in the country.

林恩踩着梯子，够到一层衣服架，拿出一个特卫强无纺布袋。里面有一件精致的芥末绿加棕色千鸟格双排扣西装，这是温莎公爵(Duke of Windsor)在乡间穿的服装。

“Whenever a new item comes in, I always check the pockets,” she said — and in this suit jacket she had found a dried autumn leaf.

“新衣服送来时，我总是会检查一下口袋，”她说。在这件西装外套里，她找到了一片干燥的秋叶。

One could almost imagine the duke strolling the grounds of his chateau outside Paris and pocketing a leaf as a memento of a brilliant fall day. “The time in which something was worn is deeply personal,” Ms. Lynn said. “It can tell you about the person and about their strata of society.”

几乎可以想象，公爵在自己位于巴黎郊外的城堡庭院中散步，捡起一片树叶放进口袋，纪念那个美丽的秋日。“在那个时候，人们的着装非常具有个人色彩，”林恩说，“它可以体现着装者的气质，以及着装者所属的社会阶层。”

Clothing, she added, often has not been cleaned when it arrives for archiving, so it may still carry the scent of perfume or wine stains from a night of revelry.

她还说，衣服送来归档时通常还没清洗，所以它可能依然带着一夜狂欢后留下的香水味或酒痕。

Ms. Lynn was opening drawers and boxes and unfolding layers of tissue paper to reveal, say, an 18th-century courtier’s costume in ribbed silk, its jacket bordered with gaily embroidered flowers and lace cuffs. But she did not first slip her hands into white cotton gloves, as most people working in costume archives do to prevent the natural oils of their skin from harming the fabrics.

林恩打开抽屉和盒子，揭开一层层棉纸，露出一件件服装，比如一套18世纪的罗纹丝绸宫廷服装，上衣边缘绣着华丽的花朵，袖口是蕾丝的。但她并没有像大部分服装档案工作者那样，为防止皮肤的天然油脂伤害布料而先戴上白棉手套。

“With certain fabrics it’s better not to wear gloves,” Ms. Lynn said. “If the fabric is fine or fragile, such as lace, you need to be able to be more tactile. That’s why I keep my nails short and without varnish. But for metals or metallic yarns” — which can tarnish — ”I wear gloves.”

“处理有些面料时，最好不要戴手套，”林恩说，“如果面料精细脆弱，比如蕾丝，你需要保持敏感的触觉。所以，我总是把指甲剪短，不涂指甲油。但如果是金属或有金属光泽的纱线，我会戴手套。”——否则会令面料失去光泽。

In the archives, everything is white: the floor tiles, the cabinet drawers, the boxes and the tissue. “That makes it easier to see if there is any frass,” Ms. Lynn said, the term for the tiny bits of fiber left by voracious bugs. She added that the constant battle against bugs explains why the rooms are as cold as nature and the palace’s builders allow: “Bugs and pests don’t like the cold.”

档案馆里的一切都是白色的：地砖、橱柜抽屉、盒子和纸巾。“这样，我们就更容易发现虫粪，”林恩说。她指的是贪吃的虫子留下的细小纤维。她还说，为了与虫子做长期斗争，宫殿的建设者们尽量让房间里和外面一样冷：“臭虫和害虫不喜欢寒冷。”

That also is why new items, which arrive about once a month, are wrapped in plastic as airtight as possible and placed in a freezer. “If they can’t be frozen,” Ms. Lynn said, “and many can’t because they have details that would crack in the cold, they are brought to the Isolation Room to be checked by eye thoroughly over a period of weeks, until we are satisfied that there are no pests.”

所以，当每月一次的新品送来时，都是用塑料尽可能地密封，放在冰箱里。林恩说，“很多衣服不能冷藏，因为它们的某些细部可能会在寒冷中冻裂。如果不能冷藏，它们就会被带到隔离室，在几周时间里用肉眼彻底检查，直到我们确信它没有携带害虫。”

Determining which items to add to the collection is a group decision: Ms. Lynn writes a proposal that is circulated to colleagues within the Palaces organization.

要决定在藏品中加入哪件物品是一个集体决定：林恩撰写提案，再分发给历史皇家宫殿机构内的同事。

It doesn’t break out acquisition costs by division but, in the last fiscal year, it spent 148,000 pounds ($210,180) for additions to all its heritage collections.

它不按照部门区分收购成本，但在上一财政年度，所有新添文物藏品的花费为14.8万英镑(约合131.8万人民币)。

Also, Ms. Lynn said, many items are donated or lent long term, and auctions are another good source: Some items in the “Diana: Her Fashion Story” exhibition running through the end of the year at Kensington Palace in London were acquired at the 1997 auction that the princess held to raise money for AIDS charities.

此外，林恩表示，许多物品都是捐赠或长期租赁的，拍卖会也是个好渠道：将在伦敦肯辛顿宫展出至今年年底的“戴安娜：她的时尚故事”(Diana: Her Fashion Story)展览上，有些物品是在王妃1997年为艾滋病慈善机构筹集资金而举办的拍卖会上购入的。

When Ms. Lynn is considering whether to acquire a piece for the collection, being able to prove the provenance is a significant element. For Diana’s clothes, it was easy: There are many photographs of the princess or, Ms. Lynn said, “I could pick up the phone to the designers who made them.”

在林恩考虑是否要将某件作品加入收藏时，能够证明出处是一个重要因素。对于戴安娜的服饰来说，这很简单：王妃有很多照片，或者像林恩说的，“我可以打电话给制作这些衣服的设计师们。”

But authenticating historic items can come down to a painting, or specialists testing fabrics and dyes to date a piece. One such impossible-to-pin-down item: the Bristowe Hat, the oldest piece in the collection.

但鉴别历史物品的真伪可能要靠一幅画作，或是让专家对织物和染料进行测试以确定物品的年份。布里斯托帽(Bristowe Hat)是藏品中最古老的一件，它是一件实在无法确定来源的物品。

Bristowe family stories say the flamboyant hat in tufted burgundy silk with a silver button and green ostrich-feather plume originally belonged to Henry VIII. It was the first piece that Ms. Lynn acquired when she took the curator’s job in 2013 — but no one can prove whether it was Henry’s or not.

这顶艳丽的帽子用簇绒紫红色丝线织成，搭配着银纽扣和绿色鸵鸟毛羽饰，根据布里斯托家族的传说，它最初属于亨利八世。这是林恩在2013年担任策展人后购入的第一件物品——但没人可以证明它是否属于亨利八世。

Upstairs in the conservation studio, Elizabeth Thompson, the collection’s textile conservation supervisor, oversees the work of two dozen or so conservators.

在楼上的保护工作室里，该展览的织物保护主管伊丽莎白·汤普森(Elizabeth Thompson)负责监督大约二十多名文物保护者的工作。

On this particular day they were leaning over works to be restored, like the 1685 Mortlake tapestry, depicting a battle at sea, and an 18th-century rose silk damask bed canopy that belonged to Queen Caroline, King George II’s wife.

今天他们的工作主要是修补待修复物品，比如1685年描绘了一场海上战斗的莫特莱克(Mortlake)壁毯，还有属于乔治二世国王之妻卡洛琳王后的18世纪玫瑰色丝绸锦缎床罩。

The group uses a number of techniques, like the “laid couching” treatment to repair tears. A small piece of fabric dyed to match the original is placed behind the tear for support and then dyed threads are used to stitch everything in place.

该小组使用了比如“衬补法”等技术来修补裂痕。将一小块和原件相衬的染色布料垫在裂痕下方以作支撑，再用染色丝线将其缝合到位。

One conservator was using small cosmetic sponges, the kind found in any drugstore, to ever-so-gently remove the tarnish on the silver-thread embroidery decorating a short, flared flamingo-pink silk evening jacket owned by Queen Victoria.

一位文物保护员使用在任何药房都能买到的小块化妆棉，无比轻柔地擦拭着维多利亚女王那件闪亮的火烈鸟粉色晚装短外套，把银色刺绣重新擦亮。

Such pieces are on display in “Victoria Revealed,” an exhibition at Kensington Palace, shown in the rooms where the young Victoria grew up.

这些物品均在肯辛顿宫的“维多利亚揭秘”(Victoria Revealed)展览中展出，被展示在年轻的维多利亚成长的房间中。

The palace, which is the home of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and their family, as well as Prince Harry and his fiancée Meghan Markle, is one of the six where the public sections are managed by Historic Royal Palaces, and it keeps a selection of about 300 pieces from the dress collection there, in central London, for easy access by scholars and researchers.

这个宫殿是剑桥公爵夫妇和家人，以及哈里王子和未婚妻梅根·马克尔(Meghan Markle)的住所，也是由历史皇家宫殿负责公共区域管理的六个宫殿之一。该系列约有300件藏品被放置在这个宫殿里，它位于伦敦中心，对学者和研究人员来说非常方便。

The real showpiece of the entire collection is the Bacton Altar Cloth, a piece of fabric recovered from a Herefordshire church two years ago that is widely believed to have been part of a skirt worn by Queen Elizabeth I. If true, it would be the only piece of her wardrobe known to have survived.

整个系列的精华在于巴克顿祭坛罩(Bacton Altar Cloth)，这是两年前在赫里福德郡一座教堂中找回的一件织物，被普遍认为是伊丽莎白女王一世裙子的一部分。如果属实，那将成为她的衣橱中唯一一件已知存留的物品。

“Clothes were often repurposed and refashioned,” Ms. Thompson said, adding that the cloth of silver, which measures about 5 feet wide and 7.5 feet long, would have been worth “the cost of a house.”

“衣服经常会被重新设计，得到新的用途，”汤普森说，并补充道，这幅5英尺宽、7.5英尺长的银质刺绣布匹大概价值“一栋房子”。

The fabric is embroidered in gold and silk threads with botanical motifs: daffodils, foxgloves and, of course, the Tudor rose. It is being restored in the conservation studio.

这件织物上用黄金和丝线绣着植物图案：水仙花、毛地黄，当然还有都铎玫瑰。它正在保存工作室内进行修复。

So, the clothing that the great queen might have worn in these very rooms, has come home.

于是，伟大女王的衣服回家了，她可能就在这些房间里穿过它。