Work wear
工裝

Takashi Tateno keeps an office in a simple studio above his wife’s hairdressing salon on the outskirts of Okayama, a medium-sized city in central Japan. In fashion circles, Okayama is famous for one thing: making the world’s best denim, using looms that date back to the 1950s. But Tateno isn’t a denim head. His brand, called Workers, adapts all sorts of American work wear from the 1900s to the ’60s—railroad jackets, canvas dusters, flannel shirts, double-kneed pants. Moreover, he’s obsessed by the American workers who manufactured these garments in their heyday, and the skills, techniques and tools used to produce such high-quality clothing on an industrial scale.
岡山是日本中部的一個中等城市。Tateno簡陋的辦公室坐落在在市郊，在他妻子經營的理發店上面。在時尚圈中，岡山以加工世界上最好的工裝而著稱，使用織布機的歷史可以追溯到50年代。但Tateno的企業并非工裝方面的領頭羊。他創建了名為工人的工裝品牌，產品由美國在1900年開始直至60年代的所有工裝改進而來，包括：鐵路工人的防護服、三防布、法蘭絨襯衫、膝部加厚的工裝褲。此外，他還一直著迷于在美國全盛時代生產這些工裝的工人們，他們的技術、技能以及在如此高質量工裝的工業化生產中所使用工具。

Before he hatched the idea of his own collection, Tateno spent years making clothes himself and working in a factory. At the same time, he launched a Japanese-language website that was absolutely alone in its single-minded pursuit of knowledge about the plans, patterns and procedures that old American work-wear manufacturers used to make their garments under such labels as Crown, W.M. Finck & Co. and Can’t Bust ’Em. Tateno journeyed to the United States multiple times to sift through archives and contact heirs to now-defunct clothing manufacturers to see if they had information about their ancestors’ businesses, and to buy up examples of the old clothes he loved so he could dissect their construction.
在總結出自己的理念之前，Tateno花費數年時間親手制作服裝并且在工廠參與工作。與此同時，他還創建了一個日語網站，完全一門心思的學習舊時美國工裝制造商的設計、式樣和加工工藝方面的知識。這些美國工廠創造了包括：皇冠、芬克以及康巴斯特在內的優秀品牌。Tateno來到美國花費大量時間查閱檔案，聯系已經落敗了的舊時工廠的繼承人，了解他們前輩在工廠經營方面的信息，并且還購買了他喜歡的那些老款服裝樣服，以剖析服裝結構。

Tateno ushers me into his upstairs space. One room is filled with all kinds of clothing, everything from the work wear he collects to contemporary Italian jackets by Boglioli. There is also machinery, including an ancient riveting machine, plus old sewing-machine accessories that Tateno purchases so the factories he hires to produce his collection can make things to the exact specifications of, say, 1924 or 1942, with the same tools in use back then.
Tateno帶我來到他樓上的房間。有一個屋子里堆滿了各式各樣的工裝，從他收集的各式防護服到由貝格里尼設計的現代意大利夾克衫。還有他購買的老式縫紉機的零件，據他所說，1924年或42年購買了這些零件，目的是為了當時能夠使用與美國同樣的工具，生產規格完全一致的工裝。

"When I learned to sew and tried to make these garments myself, I began to realize just how intricate the work was, what kind of tremendous skill level was required to turn out such huge quantities of high-quality garments," Tateno says. "These were produced at a time when American workers were the most knowledgeable and skilled in the world."
“當我學習到縫紉，并且嘗試自己制作這些防護服時，才意識到這項工作是如此精細，需要極高的技能才能生產出大批如此高質量的工裝。”Tateno說“生產這些服裝的美國工人是當時全世界知識和技能水平最高的。”

Though the kind of skilled manufacturing he admired in these garments had largely disappeared in the United States—a consequence of apparel production moving abroad and garment workers no longer finding work—he saw older Japanese people around him in Okayama with high-level sewing skills. And so he realized that if he could unearth the manufacturing secrets behind these old garments, he could make them in Okayama—and perhaps make them even better than the originals.
由于美國將服裝這類產品的生產轉移海外，服裝廠的工人們紛紛失業，盡管他所羨慕的這些技術熟練的美國服裝企業中大部分已經倒閉，但他在岡山看到自己周邊還有很多年長的日本人仍具備高超的縫紉技藝。因此他感到如果他能夠揭開在這些老式防護服背后的技術機密。他便能夠在岡山制造這些防護服，甚至或許比原來的更好。

The cult of the artisan is ensconced in contemporary urban American culture. This is the ideal of a person who can handcraft a pair of jeans or a necktie, conscious of the most minute details of fabric, workmanship and authenticity. The era Tateno’s clothing harks back to is not the age of the lone artisan laboring over a single creation, though; it’s the era of packed factories in Pennsylvania, Virginia and California churning out thousands and thousands of high-quality garments at a reasonable price, all because of the workers’ skill. The irony is that this ideal of the American worker, which sounds like something lifted from old-school union advertising copy, can be hard to find in America today.
對熟練技工的狂熱已經躺倒美國現代城市文化的歷史中。工人專注于紡織材料、加工技藝以及關乎可靠性的每個細節，手工打造一條牛仔褲或領結的情景已只存在理想之中。 然而Tateno的服裝所處的已不是單個工匠獨自創造的年代，而是賓夕法尼亞、弗吉尼亞和加利福尼亞的工廠中以低廉的價格成批出產千千萬萬套高質量服裝的時候。所有的一切都因為工人的技藝問題。具有諷刺意味的是美國工人的那種似乎由老式學堂演化而來的理想，在今天的美國已經難覓蹤影。
來源:可可英語 http://www.ccdyzl.cn/read/201407/311672.shtml