英语阅读练习题

英语阅读练习题

一、填空：

Ⅰ：

Translating Fashion

1 It's seven o'clock in the morning and Natassia Antipova, a beautiful Russian financial consultant, is getting up in the Moscow apartment where she lives alone and asking herself "What shall I wear today?" A decade ago her choices were simpler. Then, there was one kind of mascara, one color eye shadow. Now, Natassia's bathroom shelves are stocked with Avon, Estee Lauder, and Nina Ricci. Her chisels contain Levis and Armani, as well as local brand names. Her awareness of what makes a beautiful woman has been vastly expanded. In Tokyo, on the same day, Maki Ko is doing a presentation for her public relations company, Her trim size 8 figure is zipped into an Italian suit. In her English pocket-book Elizabeth Arden cosmetics share space with products from Shisiedo, the Tokyo-based beauty company. Last year Maki had Japan's most popular cosmetic surgery procedure, a rhinoplasty to make her button nose look more Western. The list goes on: The globalization of fashion is one of the phenomena of our time, a vast market for those companies who somehow have a look that translates worldwide.

2 There's nothing new, of course, about the process of fashionable imitation. In Roman Britain prosperous natives wore togas. This fashion remained popular for some time. Likewise, after the Norman invasion of Britain in 1066, French styles became chic. This kind of fashion trend has been happening for centuries. But what is new is the sheer size and. depth of penetration of this global fashion.

3 Consider Levi jeans, a company with a brand imprint carried by 2,800 retail companies in 45 countries. Worldwide sales for 1996 were US$ 7.1 billion. Or Estee Lauder, which since it went international in 1960, bas penetrated f00 markets and racked up sales of $ 3.4 billion in 1997. Or take China, whose women were forbidden as recently as l0 years ago to powder heir noses -- in recent years, the fashion and cosmetics market has expanded by 20 to 30 sercent annually. But is this all a plot by greedy designers, manufacturers and fashion, editors to clone the world into one image? Alison Lurie, author of the Language of Clothes, thinks not. She says people and cultures themselves decide on what is fashion these days.

Of far more importance to fashion trends, according to Marc Bourgery, an advertising consultant, is the question of how a country entertains golf and, more recently, with American situation comedies. "Japanese people now want to be defined as witty successful and affluent, and so that style has become cool and sought after."

5 Bourgery, who travels the world in order to advise clients on which images sell best in which countries, thinks that global fashion is nor about the West dictating to tile east. Rather, it is about a new feeling of internationalism. "Armani, for example, does not set out to look authentically Italian, anymore than Chanel wants to look specifically French," observes Bourgery. "Instead, their footprint is a look which says 'I'm elegant, sophisticated, successful, 'and that translates worldwide."

6 What it all adds up to is a world of consumer decision-making, a mix-and-match world where consumers often take what is best from their own country and combine it. Worldwide surveys of beauty practices confirm this point. Russian women confide that not all of them are crazy about the new cosmetic imports -- environmentally conscious teens and twenty- some-things,' are made for them a treasure trove of beauty secrets. In their Damascus bathrooms, alongside the modern cosmetics, are pewter bowls to which to mix Henna and bay leaf, honey and olive oil soaps or vials of perfumed oils.

7 The cruel truth about what is fashionable is that it can't be clearly defined. Today's concept of fashion draws from a far wider ethnic and national pool than ever before, and it's growing day by day.

Directions:

Find the following list of words in Passage 1 and then guess the meaning of them from their context. Finally use these words to complete the following sentences.

awareness presentation imitation remained chic

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