花語也是另類的F word，不信看看作者怎麼說?

                                           Lady Gaga與花朵帽。自然與時尚的最佳組合。

Lulu Guinness把手提包設計成一個盛裝著玫瑰的盆花，時尚圈裡花朵素材向來不缺席。

McQueen的花朵禮服，使用了大量的鮮花與人造花，令人嘆為觀止。作者認為這件衣服需要請園丁來修整一下，因為實在是太茂盛了。下圖為模特兒走秀時穿上這花卉彩衣的模樣。

這是作者文章裡面提到的繡球花。我買過這玩意兒，一朵八百塊錢。花市可能賣500，非常漂亮。難怪吸引人注意。手握一束鮮花，你也可以成為魅力發電機。

繡球花的花園，色澤鮮豔且繁茂的花朵，讓人看了目不轉睛。So hard to look away from...

已故美國畫家O'Keeffe(托福考過這個畫家)。擅長花卉的描述，放大的花朵經常讓人有性方面的聯想。

亞當與夏娃，偷嘗禁果的時間大約是秋季，為什麼？因為果樹花朵已落，大數已經結實累累啦。

下載此篇文章解析請點我

FLOWERS THAT CAN SPEAK

花語也是另類的F word

From INTELLIGENT LIFE magazine, July/August 2013

Rebecca Willis是經濟學人The Economist雜誌 Intelligent Life的固定咖。之前我部落格友介紹過這個作者。她擅長說故事，懂得小題大作是作家的本事。每次鎖定一個主題，就能上山下海、旁徵博引。這種能力是寫好作文的基本要素。少了這些能力，就缺乏觀點。 我有時會分享好的文章，Rebecca Willis就是我欣賞的好作家。謔而不虐的風格，加上令人讚嘆的文采(光看她形容綠色、紫色與藍色就明白了)，很適合研讀學習。 本篇文章，作者以個人經驗描述花朵魅力，並探討花朵在時尚與藝術甚至心理層面所隱藏的意涵。注意作者小題大作的能力與鮮活的比喻，文字節奏也很明快，適合我們多多學習。 如果要你也寫一篇關於花的文章，你會怎麼下筆呢。下面這一段，有很多跟歷史、流行與生活文化有關的記載，如Lynx 廣告與西方藝術家的作品http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29HXaYkhOzk，Lynx在台灣不曉得有沒有賣，但是這款男性的止汗劑與沐浴清潔用品，通常強打男性費洛蒙(可能是每個宅難心中的夢，廣告推出很多系列，但是中心思想只有一個，那就是管你長得帥不帥，有沒有人魚線，只要用了Lynx就能讓女性為之傾倒，所以廣告男主角經常是弱雞)，這邊作者以一束鮮花的功效跟Lynx的魅力相提並論，其實非常有趣。 這篇文章的單字與句型我都做了註解，方便大家閱讀。

A curious thing happened to me not long ago. As I walked along a rather stuffy此字指的是悶熱，也可以指人潮眾或水洩不通, upmarket充滿高級商店與市集的 street in central London, complete strangers smiled at me. Odder still, some stopped and spoke to me, and made complimentary remarks發出各種讚嘆讚美的聲音. It was like being in a twisted version of a Lynx advert(Lynx是一個男性止汗劑(沐浴產品)廣告，噴上這種止汗劑的男人都會博得眾多女性青睞。作者是指自己好像成了廣告主角，只是她沒有使用Lynx而是抱了一大束繡球花). I was suddenly eye-catching引人注意的 and attractive to both men and women. And this is why: I was carrying an armful of enormous, glorious, in-full-bloom hydrangeas繡球花(請參考圖片). Each flower-head was about six inches across, in shades from lovat green*這種綠色就是lovat through powder-blue這就是粉藍色 to inky violet這就是inky violet的顏色. They were lush繁茂 and bursting with life充滿生氣的, a beautiful blast of nature in the middle of the city像是城市中綻放的一束美麗花朵. And people could not resist抗拒 them.

下面這一段文章，提到花卉所代表的意涵。我們說不出口的話，可以由花語代勞。大多數的花卉都讓人歡喜。

Even if we don’t talk to them, flowers communicate with us. People respond to them with lit-up faces開心的笑臉 and the "aaah" noises they usually reserve for babies通常人們只有在看到可愛的事物如小baby或是小狗才會發出「啊…」的讚嘆聲，不過花朵也會讓人忍不住如此。 and puppies. A coiffed dowager-type髮妝精美的貴婦 told me they made her want to dance; a Vietnamese man越南男人 said that in his country hydrangeas were special. I love flowers, but I’d always thought Interflora’s 花店名稱"say it with flowers" slogan (花店的廣告標語是，讓花兒來替你說)作者覺得這句話其實並不誇張was really about levering money out of repressed males who couldn’t articulate their feelings不善言詞的男性，透過花錢買花來替自己表達心意. On that day, though, over the course of a few hundred yards, I realised that flowers can speak, and that what they say makes people happy.

這一段作者強調花朵是最天然的裝飾品，人們自古以來便習慣摘花來妝點自己。花朵這樣的設計元素，在時尚界向來不缺席。花卉布料與各種以花朵妝點的裝飾比比皆是。作者舉了Lady Gaga的花朵安全帽，以及設計大師McQueen的花朵禮服(活脫脫的人體花園)甚至到小學生的髮夾，都少不了花朵。

Flowers are the most natural form of adornment.花朵是最自然的裝飾 Nature’s jewellery,是自然界的寶石 if you like(如果你同意我的觀點). People have probably been plucking摘/折 them and sticking them in their hair or behind an ear since, well, since people began. They show no signs of stopping. Flower-printed fabrics花卉布料 are ubiquitous in the clothing business在時尚界裡面無所不在, but I’m talking here about three-dimensional blooms立體的花卉(不只是平面的花卉圖案). Last year, Lady Gaga wore a full-face helmet made of flowers. In 2007 Alexander McQueen showed his Sarabande dress, so embroidered with artificial 人造and fresh 鮮花flowers it looked like it needed a full-time gardener. Chanel has put tweed flowers on shoes, Prada suede ones. Lulu Guinness has made handbags that look like flower pots with a single large silken bloom on top. Flowers appear on hats and fascinators新娘或是參加婚禮人士所配戴的頭紗(通常有花朵點綴) at weddings and the races(看賽馬也有盛裝出席的女性，帶著裝飾著花朵的帽子), on flip-flops夾腳拖鞋也可以用花朵裝飾 down at the beach and on hair-slides in kindergarten幼稚園裡面小女孩的髮夾也可以是花朵圖型的.

這一段作者說明，人造花的製作技術精進，已經幾可亂真，所以現在的人對人造花的比較不會那麼不屑。所以當代時裝與設計，使用了更多假花的元素。

Now that artificial flowers have become so realistic, the attitude to them has changed and we’re less snobbishly勢利眼 resistant to them. Perhaps that’s one reason fake flowers now feature so much in what we wear. They still keep to their rightful seasons, though. The fashion industry has failed, despite repeated

efforts, to get us to wear even prints of flowers in winter冬裝的設計比較沒有花卉，這件事情無論怎麼嘗試其實都沒成功過. And they remain female territory花朵的設計樣來是女裝的專利: although Paul Smith英國設計師 has successfully appropriated floral prints for men’s shirts設計過男性花朵襯衫, you don’t often see men wearing real (or fake) flowers unless they’re on a catwalk伸展台 or in morning dress男性的常禮服(非常正式的西裝，會插一朵花在胸前). Even if they’re carrying a bunch on Valentine’s or Mother’s Day, they tend to have that self-conscious, these-are-for-someone-else look on their face.這邊指的是男性對於花朵的尷尬感，即便手裡拿著花，也要裝出一副「這花是給別人的」那種事不關己的無辜表情。

這一段探討的花卉在西方藝術裡面所扮演的角色。從波提伽利、林布蘭到馬內，花朵通常象徵著女性，已故當代美國女畫家O’Keeffe的花朵作品，經常讓人聯想到女性的生殖器。這些例子在在反映出花朵不只是芬芳與美型而已。花兒有著魅惑的能力，引誘昆蟲授粉，也能引發性方面的聯想。

The story of Western art 西方藝術has a trail of blossoms running through it: Botticelli’s possibly pregnant Primavera, Rembrandt’s portraits of his wife Saskia as Flora, goddess of flowers and spring, Manet’s Olympia, who has a bloom the same colour as her lips behind her left ear, Georgia O’Keeffe’s overtly sexual flower paintings, which depict petals like intimate folds of flesh. Flowers and fertility花朵與孕育力 have always gone together, and that’s not symbolism, that’s biological fact. A flower is designed to attract pollinators授粉者 with its colour and smell, and so aid reproduction協助繁殖與生殖. Fashion would be mad not to make use of such powerful, ready-made allure現成的誘惑—often to the same end目的通常一樣. In paintings of Adam and Eve there are images of fruit rather than flowers: the Fall happened in the Fall, when there were apples on the trees亞當與夏娃的沉淪發生在秋天，因為當時花兒已經謝掉，果樹都已經結實累累Flowers are about both innocence and sexual promise,花朵象徵著純潔無瑕與性愛的誘惑 fruit is its fulfillment.果實是誘惑的結果(禁果)

作者上一段提到了花朵與孕育力，花朵與魅力和性的象徵，最後一段，又呼應了第一段抱著一大束繡球花，在街上遇到陌生人熱情打招呼的經驗，說明了美麗花朵確實有著吸引人的能力。結論是，flower的F這個字，也可以是一個充滿性誘惑的字，也就是另類的F word。

If you think about the sex-life of flowers for too long—and you might say I have—it begins to feel almost uncomfortably explicit to wear them. I don’t want to be part of the sexualisation of the modern world我不希望成為當代世界裡面性誘惑的一部分, but I am starting to see my stroll along the street with those gorgeous hydrangeas in a different light用不同的角度去看事情. They were pumping out fertility signals不斷地湧出關於生殖(性交)方面的象徵誘惑 with the power of a radio beacon無線電信標. It may be subliminal潛意識的, but no wonder people paid attention. Now I know why they put a smile on people’s faces: flowers are a kind of F-word英文中有名的髒話，the F word,大家都曉得是什麼字，不過這邊，作者說花朵是另一種F word，意思當然是，花朵隱含著性誘惑，按照作者給的例子，這樣說理由應是相當充分的。

Rebecca Willis is our associate editor and a former travel editor of Vogue

Illustration Bill Brown