Coco Chanel was one of the most prominent fashion designers of the 20th century,
known for her exemplary work. But she had a closet full of skeletons,
including the fact that she was actually a Nazi agent during World
War II. Here's a glimpse into the troubling truth about Coco Chanel.
Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel was born in 1883 in a poorhouse in Saumur, located in western France.
Her parents were not legally married at the time of her birth. Her mother,
Eugénie, gave birth to Chanel at a charity hospital at the age of 20.
Chanel's early years were harsh, as the family struggled to get by on limited means.
Her mother fell ill and passed away when Chanel was just 11.
Unable to support his family, her father sent the children away, and Chanel grew up in an
orphanage called Aubazine that was managed by nuns, only leaving once she turned 18.
All of this Chanel worked to keep secret. Later in life, not wanting people to know
about her humble upbringing, she claimed her father had gone to America to seek his
fortune and left her in the care of two strict aunts. According to Time Magazine, she claimed,
"My aunts were good people, but absolutely without tenderness. I was not loved in their house."
There may be some truth to that if you consider these fictional aunts
to be the very real nuns who ran the orphanage.
One thing that is apparently true, though, is that she never saw her father again.
In the orphanage, the girls had a fixed schedule that revolved around lessons,
sewing sessions, and prayer most days of the week. According to Time, they would perfect their skills
by sewing simple things such as linens. While Chanel didn't like her regimented schedule,
she was fascinated by the art of sewing, and observing patterns and designs.
As a little girl, she'd also gotten her hands on books such as Two Little Vagrants,
tales of those who broke free from the shackles of poverty and found wealth. Chanel said,
"Those novels taught me about life. They nourished my sensibility and my pride."
Besides her early interest in fashion, Chanel also harbored dreams of being a singer. According
to The Telegraph, at 18 she left the orphanage and started working full-time as a seamstress
at a draper's shop. The gig was arranged by the nuns at Aubazine, who took it upon themselves
to help her. She spent her weekends stitching for a tailor, too, working on breeches for army men.
But she also started attending concerts nearby at a park and began singing and performing.
According to legend, she sang two songs,
"Ko Ko Ri Ko" and "Qui qu'a vu Coco?" which prompted locals to begin calling her "Coco."
Chanel's singing career was short-lived,
and she soon figured out that her future wasn't in music, but in fashion.
While Chanel had many male admirers and romantic relationships in her life,
she never ended up getting married. Her personal life and torrid relationships
did attract a lot of attention and got people talking, though.
As a young woman, according to The Independent,
Chanel was attractive and admired. She courted several men in her youth and was
a rich man's mistress — an affair that helped her explore the world of the privileged. Her
lover was named Etienne Balsan, and he spent his time breeding horses.
After her relationship with Balsan, she dated Arthur "Boy" Capel, a polo player from the U.K.
In 1910, Capel lent her money, allowing Chanel to set up her first clothing shop.
The two remained involved both personally and professionally until his accidental death in 1919.
While many of Chanel's contributions to the fashion industry, such as her signature
perfume Chanel No. 5, are wildly popular, what may not be as well-known is the fact
that her first foray into the world of fashion was designing hats for the public, per The Guardian.
According to the Telegraph, Chanel's hats were elegant and free of fussy embellishments.
At first, she simply purchased boat hats from department stores and dressed them
up with ribbons. But she eventually found her way to original designs,
reinventing chic styles. Chanel herself was partial to simple hats,
and throughout her life wore them along with the simple fashion of her youth. Her preferred
manner of dress has even been compared to that of a schoolgirl; she once said,
"Nothing makes a woman look older than obvious expensiveness, ornateness, complication."
Chanel's choice to remain unapologetically raw earned her attention in the world of fashion.
Prominent French fashion icon Paul Poiret commented
on Chanel's beginnings in the industry, saying,
"We ought to have been on guard against that boyish head. It was going to give us
every kind of shock, and produce, out of its little conjuror's hat,
gowns and coiffures and jewels and boutiques."
Throughout her career, Chanel ended up making such an impact on the fashion scene
that others often tried to mimic her designs. She invented the classic little black dress,
a trend that remains in vogue many years after she first made it popular.
She advocated simplicity and elegance in fashion. She once said,
"There is nothing so beautiful as emptiness."
Chanel was revered by others, and she was responsible for occasionally kick-starting trends
without even meaning to. For example, in the 1920s, she returned from a vacation with a tan,
and everyone else followed suit, forgoing pale complexions for more tanned looks.
She was also the first designer who didn't simply stick to experimenting
with clothes and broadened her horizons, testing perfume and launching her scent.
In the 1930s, Chanel decided to venture into Hollywood. According to Vanity Fair,
Hollywood bigwig and film producer Samuel Goldwyn reckoned that someone like Chanel
could transform the way films looked and attract more crowds to the cinemas. He wanted Chanel to
add a touch of elegance to the movies and get his female audiences to sit up and take notice.
Chanel initially wasn't interested, but eventually changed her mind and began working with Goldwyn.
She was vocal about being fiercely independent throughout, though,
and said that she would not make a single dress in Hollywood. She wasn't going to
be seen as a costume designer — though she was one — and made her views clear, saying,
"I have not brought my scissors with me. Later, perhaps when I go back to Paris,
I will create and design gowns six months ahead for actresses in Mr. Goldwyn's pictures."
While Goldwyn and Chanel did work on a few films together,
their collaboration didn't receive much appreciation from critics.
Chanel's style was deemed to be unfit for the big screen, with one Hollywood costume
designer commenting that Chanel's designs were, quote, "a washout on the screen."
Behind Chanel's carefully constructed public personna was a dark side:
She didn't think highly of homosexuality and wasn't afraid to make that known.
She also disliked Jews and was vocal in her sentiments. Author and journalist Hal Vaughan
wrote in his 2011 book, Sleeping With the Enemy, about Chanel's anti-Semitism and how she found
herself attracted to British high society: She was the mistress of the Duke of Westminster,
Hugh Richard Arthur, who was himself openly anti-Semitic.
Samuel Goldwyn, while working with Chanel in Hollywood, was also aware of her views.
Vaughan wrote that Goldwyn, quote, "did his best to keep Jews away from Chanel."
Naturally, in 2011 the Chanel company defended their founder and namesake,
claiming that she couldn't have been anti-Semitic
since she had business ties with members of the Jewish community.
Her record during World War II, however, tells the truth — and paints an even darker picture.
Though she was never punished for her role in World War II, evidence uncovered in the decades
since makes a very strong case that Chanel was not only colaborating with the Nazis,
but was actually a Nazi agent carrying out missions on their behalf.
During the war, Chanel was the lover of a Nazi officer by the name of Hans Günther von Dincklage.
According to Sleeping with the Enemy, records from several different countries, including
Germany, France, the U.S., and the U.K., all show that Chanel
was active in attempting to recruit spies to work on behalf of the Nazi government.
It is believed that Chanel even had a secret name that she used for these missions: "Westminster."
According to declassified documents, in 1944 Chanel was actually sent by
the Germans on a mission to Britain to attempt to broker a secret backdoor deal
with Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who was a personal friend of Chanel. However,
the plan was scuttered when a mutual friend denounced Chanel as a Nazi spy.
When France was finally liberated, Chanel was arrested and interrogated.
German officers testified that Chanel had worked for them as a spy. However,
she ended up getting off free; according to Biography, she then went out of her way to
cover up her actions, using her connections and bribery to paper over her crimes.
Exactly how and why the Allies let Chanel get away with it despite all the evidence against her is
a matter of mystery. Vaughan told the New Yorker that he couldn't find an answer in his research.
"I have no idea. I can't figure it out."
Or, as another icon of fashion so famously put it,
"Doesn't anyone notice this? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills!"
There is some evidence, though, that Churchill may have personally intervened on her behalf.
Why? The prevailing theory is that she may have had secret and potentially damaging
information about the wartime activities of high ranking British officials,
including former British King Edward VIII, who was a known Nazi sympathizer.
And those were secrets which Churchill couldn't allow to be made public.
Whether or not that theory is true, though, remains a mystery.
Remember that thing where Chanel the company claimed that Coco Chanel the
person wasn't anti-semitic on account of having Jewish business partners?
Well, funny thing about that. When the company was founded in 1924, Coco received 10% ownership
in exchange for the financial backing of Pierre Wertheimer, head of an insanely rich
German-Jewish family. She wanted more, though, and during the war she used anti-Semitic laws
imposed on France by Nazi occupiers to try seize their portion of the company.
Wertheimer had outsmarted her, though, by preemptively transferring ownership
of the company to a friend who was a Christian. Sorry, Coco!
After the war, the friend gave the company back to them, which left the Wertheimers with a dilemma:
the figurehead and namesake of their company was an outcast.
After being interrogated and released by the authorities following the war,
Coco had gone into seclusion in Switzerland to avoid more uncomfortable situations in France.
Eventually, though, business trumped personal animosity, and the Wertheimers backed her return
to fashion and French society in 1954. Now past 70 years old, she released her
first couture line in more than 15 years. Coco was greeted with suspicion in France,
but became a sensation in America, where her pro-Nazi activities weren’t known.
Hal Vaughan explained to The New Yorker how Chanel was able to make
a comeback in the fashion world after her exile:
"The simple answer is Wertheimer money: Chanel was backed by the Wertheimers. But really there was
also the fact that, by 1954, most French people didn't give a damn about who collaborated and who
didn't. De Gaulle had decided that all Frenchmen had been resisters, and all this collaboration
business was behind them. And let's not forget that Chanel was also tremendously talented."
Chanel spent a major part of her twilight years by herself, holed up in her room at
the Hotel Ritz in Paris. While she was surrounded by admirers in her youth,
her life wasn't all that it was cracked up to be. Her last words on January 10, 1971, to her
maid were rather simple and straightforward. She was just back from her walk with a friend
and was exhausted. As she lay on her bed, she said, quote, "You see, this is how you die."
Despite her accomplishments, Coco Chanel held viewpoints and took actions during
her life that are indefensible today, from her vocal anti-Semitism and homophobia to the fact
that she actively aided the Nazis during World War II. More details of that dark legacy are
still being uncovered, and only time will tell how history will ultimately judge Coco Chanel.