Sublimation and black melancholy: the creation of Yves Saint-Laurent

Abstract

Yves Henri Donat Mathieu-Saint Laurent, known as Yves Saint Laurent, is a twentieth-century haute-couture creator who revolutionized the lines and codes of fashion and genre. Its creation marks a unique imprint and a timeless style. Through this study, we seek to identify, on the one hand, the intimate and subjective springs of creation for Yves Saint Laurent. We rely, to demonstrate the logic at work, on many documents but also on the words of Yves Saint Laurent himself concerning his know-how and his creative approach. This leads us, on the other hand, to situate the functions that take for him the sublimatory treatment of the pulsion, and this in its articulation with melancholia. Our hypothesis, in fact, is that the sublimatory montage, as stated from childhood by the artist of «machinery», enabled him to supplement the forclusion of symbolic and to counteract, to some extent, the urge of death. He was thus able to call himself «the creator of all women», which is the appointment of an exceptional position. For him, the beauty is an essential bulwark to the horror of no thingness. The design of a dress is a knot between aesthetics, enjoyment and fiction that makes the object rise on the public stage. This allows the artis to produce a body. His sewing, as well as his bond with his lover partner, have kept a desire to create a unique style for women and to enroll them in modernity.