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Coco Chanel: Nazi Collaborator or Spy?

Coco Chanel and Her String of Pearls
Coco Chanel and her string of pearls. Photo by anonymous (date unknown).

Five years ago, I wrote a blog by the same name. It was back in the days when I purposely limited my blogs to no more than five or six hundred words (my Millennial friends told me this was the “norm”). I’ve re-read some of those blogs and frankly, I’m embarrassed. First, my writing style has evolved (and hopefully, improved). Second, I could have added so much more interesting information had I not listened to my friends. Another difference between then and now is the number of images we used. Our blogs today use as many images as I can find that add value to the story. In the past, one or two images made it into the story. I guess this is what you call progress. So, we’ve gone back into the archives and picked out some of the more popular past blogs and I will be re-writing them to present to you with expanded content. We started with the blog, The Last Train Out of Paris (click here to read the blog) and today, you’ll visit with an icon of the fashion industry, Coco Chanel (1883-1971). She is clearly someone who many people have put on a pedestal as a result of her achievements. But hold on before you worship at the Chanel altar. Coco Chanel spent many of her later years trying to hide her secrets from the public and I suppose she succeeded since not many people are aware of her espionage activities with the Gestapo or her virulent anti-Semitic views. Read More Coco Chanel: Nazi Collaborator or Spy?

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Coco Chanel: Nazi Collaborator or Spy?

Several weeks after the liberation of Paris, Gabrielle (Coco) Chanel was arrested by members of the FFI (French Forces of the Interior—resistance fighters during latter stages of the war) and taken to the Free French Purge Committee headquarters. After two hours of questioning, Chanel was released. She would later tell her maid that she was released under the personal orders of Winston Churchill. Within hours of arriving back at 31, rue Cambon, Chanel left in her Cadillac for Lausanne, Switzerland where she would live in exile until her return to Paris in the mid-1950s (she would come back to Paris from time to time—once as a witness in a trial of her friend and collaborator, Baron Louis de Vaufreland—the judge would declare, “The answers Mademoiselle Chanel gave to the court were deceptive”).

Coco Chanel. Photo (c.1970). Photograph by Marion Pike. Public Domain - copyright expired. Wikimedia Commons.
Coco Chanel. Photo (c.1970). Photograph by Marion Pike. Public Domain – copyright expired. Wikimedia Commons.

Backstory

Chanel had been put on the French Resistance black list since 1942 as a German collaborationnistes (specifically as a horizontal collaborator—get the euphemism?). She was well known as being anti-Communist, pro-German, and virulently anti-Semitic (her verbal diatribes at dinner parties are legendary). Chanel was extremely adept at spinning any story to suit her needs or objectives. Her life story included a broken family childhood (i.e., insecurity—she was a very complex individual), prostitution, homosexuality, drug addiction, creativity, business acumen, betrayals, treason, promiscuous activities, a well-known spy mission, cover-ups, bribes, extreme poverty, extreme wealth, dance halls, lovers—men and women, intellectual friends, loyalty to her friends, and a passion for fashion and fragrances that remain legendary. Wow, how many of us have that resume? Read More Coco Chanel: Nazi Collaborator or Spy?