聖誕來臨"醜陋毛衫"大流行
O Christmas sweater, O Christmas sweater! Amid a surge in fashion nostalgia, the much-maligned Christmas knit is enjoying a moment of irony-infused popularity.
Individuals and big corporations are hosting holiday events dedicated to "ugly" or "tacky" Christmas sweaters. Fashionable retailers like Bloomingdale's, H&M and Abercrombie & Fitch are putting snowflake and reindeer styles in windows and catalogs. Meanwhile, thrift stores and websites are out of stock of vintage designs, the more elaborate the better.
Brian Philippoi, a 26-year-old employee of a Web design firm, wore a bulky cream sweater with a bright alpine print along with dark skinny jeans and sneakers to a recent party. He describes the sweater as "very 1960s Swiss ski resort." "It's like walking a Great Dane," he says. "You have to show it who's boss."
Searches for "ugly Christmas sweaters" are up 30% in December compared with December last year. On eBay this year, someone paid $282.59 for a sweater with three reindeer across the front, an increase from the website's most expensive holiday sweater last year, which sold for $200. Ebay's sales of holiday sweaters are 24% ahead of last year.
Dunkin' Donuts is giving $60 gift cards to people who post pictures of themselves on Twitter by Dec. 22 in holiday sweaters that are "kitschy or cute or glamorous or ho ho horrible," says a company spokeswoman.
The Christmas sweater started out as homemade, became a mass-market hit in the 1980s and has been a dependable seller ever since, even though "fashion snobs look down their noses at them," says David Wolfe, creative director at the Doneger Group consulting firm. For many, they bring back memories of grandma and a time of year when "everybody just drops their sophistication and goes for the heart."
Randall Ferguson, a 27-year-old who grew up in Michigan, began hosting "ugly sweater parties" in college. "It started out as a way for us to mock our moms," he says. For a party he hosted last week in his Manhattan apartment, Mr. Ferguson wore a snowman sweater that he bought for $10 earlier this season on eBay.
聖誕毛衫！聖誕毛衫！隨着時裝懷舊風的興起，曾經飽受攻擊的聖誕毛衫正迎來戲劇性的大流行。
聖誕來臨之際，個體戶和大公司都在舉辦“醜陋”或“俗氣”的聖誕毛衫節日特賣活動。布魯明戴爾百貨店、H&M品牌服飾、A&F品牌服飾等時裝經銷商的櫥窗和商品目錄冊中都出現了雪花和馴鹿圖飾的服裝。與此同時，二手貨店和網店的復古風服飾也已脫銷，做工越精緻的服裝銷路越好。
26歲的布賴恩•菲利比是一家網站設計公司的職員。他最近參加一場派對時，上身穿了一件寬大的米色毛衫，毛衫上鮮豔地印着阿爾卑斯山圖案，下身則搭配了一條黑色緊身牛仔褲和運動鞋。他稱這款毛衫“頗具上世紀60年代瑞士滑雪勝地的味道”，“就像在溜丹麥大狗”，“你得讓它知道誰說了算”。
與去年同期相比，今年12月“聖誕醜衫”的搜索量增加了30%。今年，有顧客在易趣購物網站上花費282.59美元購買了一件胸前有三隻馴鹿圖案的毛衫，價格高於去年該網站最貴的節日毛衫（售價200美元）。易趣網站的節日毛衫銷售量也比去年增加了24%。
唐恩都樂公司的一位女發言人稱，如果你在12月22日前在Twitter上傳身穿“庸俗、可愛、迷人或恐怖”的節日毛衫的個人照，該公司將爲你提供價值60美元的禮品卡。
多尼戈爾集團諮詢公司的創意總監戴維•沃爾夫表示，聖誕毛衫起初多是自制的，在上世紀80年代銷量大增，此後銷量一直很可觀，儘管“自以爲是的時尚達人們看不上它們”。對很多人來說，這些毛衫可以喚起兒時回憶，也是一年中“所有人褪去世故，表露真心”的時刻。
27歲的蘭德爾•弗格森在密歇根長大，他在大學時代就開始舉辦“醜衫派對”。他說：“我們最初發起這一派對是爲了用它來嘲笑自己的母親。”上週在他位於曼哈頓的公寓中舉辦的一次派對上，弗格森先生穿了一件今冬在易趣網站上花了10美元購買的雪人毛衫。
Vocabulary:
nostalgia: a yearning for the return of past circumstances, events, etc（懷舊，思鄉）
thrift store: 舊貨店，二手貨店
Great Dane: 丹麥大狗，大丹狗
kitschy: something of tawdry design, appearance, or content created to appeal to popular or undiscriminating taste（庸俗的藝術作品，無真正藝術價值的作品）
ho: 引人注意，表示驚訝
