Abstract
Shame has become a prominent topic in recent research in psychology and philosophy, but it has rarely been linked to aesthetic contexts. The present study’s examination of the life and work of fashion designer Karl Otto Lagerfeld (1933-2019) attempts to understand how the subject was able to transform shame experiences through his particular approach to aesthetics. Both the history of aesthetics and Positive Psychology 2.0 (PP2.0) will be drawn upon to cast lights on salient events and relationships in Lagerfeld’s life, the overarching concern being to reveal the nexus between the subject’s experience of shame and the strategies he marshalled to meet life challenges.
The chapter takes a psychobiographical approach to the life of the subject, Karl Otto Lagerfeld. The subject was purposefully sampled.
The study found that Lagerfeld’s early affective experiences with his mother, Elizabeth, as well as an entire childhood spent learning about culture and art at her feet, informed his later ability to reach for the positivity hidden within shameful experiences and turn it toward the creation of new and original fashion designs.
The title comes from Lagerfeld biographer Raphaëlle Bacqué: “The sublime dresses he designed for Chloé always sold well, but now [in the 1960s] people saw [Karl Lagerfeld] as an aristocrat of the underground” (Bacqué, 2020: 81).
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Notes
- 1.
The authors will not write an entire sub-section on the research methodology on psychobiography since it is assumed that psychobiography as a research methodology will be explained in the present volume’s introduction and in its other chapters.
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Mayer, CH., Kelley, J.L. (2021). ‘Aristocrat of the underground’: Karl Lagerfeld’s Romantic Self-fashioning as a Meaningful Transformation of Shame. In: Mayer, CH., Fouché, P.J., Van Niekerk, R. (eds) Psychobiographical Illustrations on Meaning and Identity in Sociocultural Contexts . Sociocultural Psychology of the Lifecourse . Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81238-6_8
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