Coco Chanel Read online

  But the true driving force behind the perfume’s success was Pierre Wertheimer who, along with his brother Paul, owned an extremely successful cosmetics company, Bourjois. Chanel had approached Theophile Bader, owner of the department store Galeries Lafayette in Paris, about stocking her new perfume. Bader was well aware of Chanel’s cachet with Parisian women and instantly realized how quickly her perfume would fly off the shelves, much more rapidly than it could currently be produced. To remedy this problem he suggested a meeting with the Wertheimer brothers to discuss moving the perfume’s production to their Bourjois factory. In addition to their business expertise, the Wertheimer family were avid art collectors and owners of racehorses, elements that clicked with Chanel.

  On the balcony of her suite at the Ritz

  The Wertheimers’ decision to produce perfume N°5 immortalized the Wertheimer name in the world of cosmetics and fragrances. Wertheimer had supreme faith in Chanel’s “nose” and knew Bader would not have suggested their involvement unless he viewed this as a lucrative business deal. Today, the family still owns a controlling interest in the privately held House of Chanel. Not only did the Wertheimers produce perfume for Chanel, they helped her create and expand a cosmetics empire that, like all of her creations, has proven to have a life of its own. A visitor to Paris can visit the House of Chanel factory, which displays the Chanel products produced there over the years.

  Gloria Swanson wearing a Chanel design created for the 1931 movie Tonight or Never

  Both the novelist Colette and the fashion editor Diana Vreeland described Chanel as looking like a little bull. In this photograph of Chanel, with her flaring nostrils and dark piercing eyes, it is easy to see what they meant.

  In return for 10% of the profits, Chanel licensed her name as Parfums Chanel and stepped away from the daily business enterprise. The Wertheimers’ agreement with Bader gave him a 20% share of the profits, so that the Wertheimer brothers benefitted from the remaining 70%, but also accepted all risk of producing and marketing the brand.

  To have accepted such a small share of the profits, Chanel, as the savvy business woman she was, must have assumed the revenue from N°5 (or cosmetics, in general) would never be as profitable as it proved to be. By the World War II years, the revenue she was forgoing was evident, and she undertook to get it back. Because the Wertheimers were Jewish, to avoid Nazi persecution they fled France for the United States in 1941. As an Aryan, Chanel was able to file a petition with the German occupiers to legalize her sole ownership of the assets of Parfums Chanel. Unbeknownst to Chanel, the prescient Wertheimers had transferred legal control of the business to a Christian businessman, Felix Amiot, who ran the company during the war. Chanel was unable to secure the business’s assets, and at war’s end the business was returned to the Wertheimers.

  In 1923, Chanel began a seven- year affair with the 44-year-old Hugh Richard Arthur Grosvenor, 2nd Duke of Westminster, the richest man in England at the time. The two met at a party in Monte Carlo after being introduced by a mutual friend, Vera Bate, connected in a rather minor way to British aristocracy. Grosvenor had lost his father as a young child. Thus, at his grandfather’s death in 1899 he inherited the entire family fortune at the young age of 20.

  Growing up he enjoyed a rather bohemian life filled with the love and affection of his mother, her much younger husband (only 16 years his stepson’s senior), and two older sisters. As a result, Grosvenor was a very agreeable, kind, and empathetic man, who enjoyed and appreciated women, a real drawing card for the wounded Chanel. Grosvenor was married to his second wife, Violet Nelson, when he met Chanel. His first marriage to Constance Edwina Lewes had begun to disintegrate after the death from appendicitis of their only male child. The duke’s marriage to Violet produced no children.

  A 1937 photo by Franz Kollar; note the sketches posted on her beloved coromandel screens of which she would eventually own 32.

  Yet again, Chanel’s attraction to fabulously wealthy and elite men paid off, as she was on the receiving end of a London house as well as a plot of land on the French Riviera where she would build her villa, La Pausa, whose design was inspired by the convent that sheltered her as an adolescent. The couple spent many extended vacations together at the duke’s homes in England and Scotland where the couple engaged in salmon fishing, horseback riding, and playing cards by the fireplace in the evenings.

  Another popular choice for getaways together was on board Grosvenor’s yacht and surrogate baby, Flying Cloud, typically docked on the French Riviera. At the time of their meeting, Chanel was still involved with Dmitri Pavlovich, yet was growing increasingly tired of his philandering ways, a sticking point after years of hurt from Capel’s romantic disloyalty. With Grosvenor, she certainly had the same concerns—he too was a well-known playboy—but his wealth and connections were staggeringly compelling. Chanel eventually succumbed to the duke, ending her relationship with Pavlovich in 1924. Grosvenor proved to be a truly beneficial alliance as she quickly found herself mingling with the best-of-the-best upper-class English set, including Winston Churchill, who took a great liking to her and would endear himself to her after World War II as she strove to protect herself from accusations that she was a Nazi collaborator.

  A growing affinity for the English encouraged Chanel to take her fashions “across the pond” where they were greeted by an adoring clientele of wealthy British women. Vogue wrote: “Chanel, one of the most popular of great French couturiers, has come to London.... In a beautiful Queen Anne house, with paneled walls and parquet floors, mannequins graceful and slender as lilies show us Chanel’s latest collection....” Chanel opened her boutique in the house Grosvenor had purchased for her, and by doing so created much speculation that they were soon to be married. The marriage never came to pass. Chanel’s proclamation “there have been many Duchesses of Westminster, but only one Coco Chanel!” may explain why. In 1930, having divorced Violet Nelson, the duke married an English aristocrat, Loelia Ponsonby, and his affair with Chanel came to an end. Loelia, the Duchess of Westminster, recalls in her memoir Grace and Favour (Reynal, 1961) being presented by the duke to Chanel in the winter of 1930 as if “for inspection.” On the way to meet Chanel, Grosvenor stopped at the jeweler Van Cleef & Arpels to pick up a bauble. Leaving the store he patted his pocket, telling Loelia, “Not for you.” The marriage began as it was to end, with much unhappiness.

  Another photograph by Franz Kollar, 1937, capturing Chanel at work

  As Chanel’s affair with Grosvenor was ending, her affair with Hollywood was just beginning. Having earned a worldwide reputation by this time, the Hollywood mogul Samuel Goldwyn approached Chanel, offering her a $ 1 million contract to provide her services to the Hollywood film industry. The New York Times reported that her services would include reorganizing the dressmaking department of the United Artists studios and anticipating fashions six months ahead, solving the studio’s ongoing problem of keeping film fashions up to date.

  Chanel’s acceptance of Goldwyn’s offer may have been influenced by the Great Depression. Just like every other market, the Parisian couture market was under severe stress, and she had been forced to halve her prices. The Great Depression was similarly likely a factor in Goldwyn’s desire to hire Chanel. From Goldwyn’s standpoint, he believed that financially strained American audiences would be drawn to movies filled with the alluring and glamorous fashions of Paris couture.

  So Chanel...draped with strands and strands of pearls and a cigarette dangling from her fingertips

  Misia accompanied Chanel to Hollywood and the two departed France in late February 1931. When they arrived in New York City, they boarded a train car fully decked out by Goldwyn. It was entirely white, loaded to the gills with French champagne and with reporters from every important newspaper. Arriving at Union Station in Los Angeles after their cross-country trip, the queen of fashion was greeted by none other than Greta Garbo. Despite all the fan-fare and attention, Chanel only worked on three films.

  The
first, Palmy Days, went relatively unnoticed by film critics. The deadline for the film gave Chanel scarcely enough time to do her job. One notable aspect of the film is that Chanel created a series of dresses for the leading lady, Barbara Weeks, and despite all appearing to be identical, each was slightly different. This is yet another example of Chanel’s supreme attention to detail. Her goal was to complement the actress in her different scenes, using slightly different cuts and draping so that the dress would make the actress look her best on screen as the angle of the shot and the action changed.

  The second film, Tonight or Never, starred Gloria Swanson. A year later, for the last film she worked on—The Greeks Had a Word for Them, also known as Three Broadway Girls, with Ina Claire, Joan Blondell, and Madge Evans—Chanel designed 30 dresses, most of which were finished in her Paris studio and shipped to Hollywood. Surprisingly, Goldwyn and his studio heads were disappointed with Chanel’s designs, asserting that her designs were not “sensational enough” for the movies. Chanel left aggravated with the American movie scene, vowing never to work again in the States, especially Hollywood, because it was “vulgar.”

  Chanel’s next great venture was in the world of jewelry. The International Guild of Diamond Merchants commissioned her to design a diamond jewelry collection, Bijoux de Diamants. The collection when completed was on display to the public for an admission price of 20 francs. Two days after the opening, the share price of the diamond mining company De Beers rocketed up on the London stock exchange, proving that Chanel’s touch was magic indeed. For herself, Chanel always claimed to prefer costume jewelry to the real thing, but the contrast between her simple yet chic clothing designs and her new opulent diamond jewelry collection complemented each other well.

  Photographed at work by Roger Schall, 1937

  Some of the most controversial and mysterious years of Chanel’s life are those of World War II, when her actions, as well as her alleged anti-Semitic feelings, caused many to speculate that she was a Nazi spy and sympathizer. Throughout her life, Chanel affiliated herself with the socially and economically powerful as a means of financial self-preservation and independence. Why would her modus operandi change because of war? Her beloved Paris, the only real home she had ever known, had been invaded by the German army who exerted the all- encompassing power of an occupying force. Her business was no longer viable in the midst of war. The astute Chanel certainly knew on which side her bread was buttered and acted accordingly.

  The fact that Chanel stayed in Paris and rubbed elbows with the Nazi occupiers is obviously damaging to her claim of French and Allied patriotism when so many people did flee and lost so much in an effort to remove themselves, their families, and businesses from the taint of National Socialism. The truth of the matter will likely never be known, whether because no valid support exists for such claims of collaboration or because her connections to the Duke of Westminster and Churchill, among others, allowed such support to be swept under the rug.

  Her Allied allegiance was questioned largely because of her affair with the German aristocrat Baron Hans Gunther von Dincklage, known to his friends as Spatz. Born to a British mother and German father, Spatz had been in Paris since 1928. His marriage to a half-Jewish German woman, whom he divorced in 1935, did nothing to deter his rather rakish tendencies in the racy milieu of pre-war Paris. Chanel claims to have known him or known of him during these years, but did not begin her affair with him until 1941. In his controversial book Sleeping with the Enemy: Coco Chanel’s Secret War (Knopf/Random House, 2011), Hal Vaughan, a U.S. veteran, journalist, and diplomat who retired in Paris, provides what he views as a plethora of documentation from recently declassified government documents that unquestionably proves von Dincklage was an Abwehr (German military intelligence) spy as well as Chanel.

  1952

  In 1939, as the war started in full force, Chanel shut her boutiques, leaving her Paris shop open only for the sale of perfumes and accessories. In 1940, she launched a new fragrance, Biege de Chanel. Others, such as Elsa Schiaparelli, a major rival, as well as Molyneux and Lanvin, vowed to keep their couture businesses going as much to provide needed jobs in war-torn France as an attempt to maintain the status quo in the face of the unimaginable turn of events.

  A line of reality was drawn, however, when in May 1940 German troops encroached on Paris. All couture businesses were shuttered. Chanel packed her belongings in various trunks, stored them at the Ritz, paid her bill two months in advance, and departed Paris in her (now drafted) chauffer’s personal car instead of her black Rolls-Royce, which she was advised would stand out like a sore thumb.

  Traveling with Chanel were several of her female employees who had been working with her since her earliest days as a milliner. They traveled to the Pyrenees where Chanel had bought a house many years before for her nephew, André Palasse, who had by then left to join the French army. André would eventually be captured by the Germans and sent to a prisoner-of-war camp, one of the events that set in motion Chanel’s deeper involvement with the Germans.

  André’s daughter, Chanel’s namesake Gabrielle, was at the house, and as Justine Picardie tells it in her biography of Chanel, remembers their arrival in this way: “She came in the car with her maid, and a few other women-one of them was Madame Aubert-so it was quite a job finding places for all of them to stay. Auntie Coco had somehow managed to send on her entire gold dressing table set which had been given to her by my godfather, the Duke of Westminster, and that came to our house separately.... She was already staying with us by the time the Armistice was signed [on June 22, 1940]-we listened to the news on the radio, and she wept bitterly.” France had surrendered to Hitler.

  The designer at work, photographed for Vogue magazine by Henry Clarke, 1954

  Chanel and her entourage remained at the Pyrenees house for the summer, naturally afraid to return to Paris and of what they would find there if they did. At some point, her friend Marie-Louise Bousquet arrived at the Pyrenees house and the two conceived a plan to make their way back to Paris. After the expected detours and delays, the two completed the journey. Chanel naturally gravitated to the Ritz, filled to the rafters with German officers. As was Chanel’s way, she persuaded the Germans to let her stay at the hotel, and the hotel’s management found her a small room.

  Even though she didn’t begin her affair with the much younger von Dincklage until 1941, Chanel had been under suspicion by the French police since 1929. Her good friend Vera Bate, who had introduced her to the Duke of Westminster in 1923, had married Colonel Alberto Lombardi. Both were suspected German spies.

  When she learned of her nephew’s capture by the Germans, Chanel implored von Dincklage to help her negotiate André’s release from the German POW camp, but his attempts at doing so were not successful. Next, Chanel turned to Spatz’s friend Captain Theodore Momm, but he also was unable to achieve André’s release. During the ensuing negotiations in the fall of 1943, the Nazi chief of foreign intelligence, Walter Shellenburg, approached Chanel about carrying a clandestine letter to the British, aware of her close association with Churchill, to alert the Allies that certain senior German commanders were no longer supportive of Hitler. The mission was named Operation Modellhut (Model Hat).

  From here the plot is murky to say the least. The plan was either for Chanel or her friend Vera Lombardi (or both) to deliver the letter to the British ambassador, Sir Samuel Hoare, in Madrid. Accounts of the story from the major players differ. Chanel may or may not have traveled to Madrid and/or Berlin. Her possible trip to Madrid may or may not have been with Vera, who had been arrested in Italy and was being held as a British spy, but was subsequently released due to German intervention to make the trip to Madrid. Vera did by all accounts arrive in Madrid and immediately gave up Chanel—true or not—as a German spy. Schellenberg promptly dropped all contact with Lombardi and Chanel, not desiring to draw unwanted attention to himself and his compatriots who were attempting communication that would have been a death sentence had
Hitler known.

  Photographed by Willy Rizzo at the Tuilleries gardens in Paris, 1957

  In September 1944, Chanel was questioned by the French authorities about her involvement with the Nazis during the war, but that brief encounter was basically the end of the inquiry with the exception of an appearance in 1949 at the war crimes trial of Baron Louis de Vaufreland, a German intelligence officer. Speculation remains that Churchill intervened not only to save his friend Chanel, but also to save many members of the British aristocracy from being implicated as Nazi sympathizers should Chanel have to spill all.

  Chanel left Paris in 1945, moving to Switzerland where she would remain until 1954 when she once again returned to Paris to revive her fashion empire. During her early days in Switzerland, she enlisted her good friend and writer Paul Morand to immortalize her life’s story. The two met in a St. Moritz hotel in 1946 where she freely offered her opinions, philosophies, and tales of the rich and famous, including Misia Sert, Serge Lifar, Jean Cocteau, Pablo Picasso, and Winston Churchill. The result was a small volume, presented as a conversation between the two, called The Allure of Chanel. Morand’s book was recently updated with 73 sketches by Karl Lagerfield, the head designer and creative director of Chanel since the early 1980s, published in the U.S. and U.K. in 2013 by Pushkin.

  Chanel left retirement at the age of 70 to combat what she viewed as the re-emergence of constrictive couture, primarily emanating from the drawing boards of Christian Dior. For so many years she had struggled to overcome fashionable clothing that did not allow women to be and feel free, and she just could not ignore the direction the fashion industry was taking—a U turn. The critics, particularly those in Europe, were rather vicious toward her return. But Bettina Ballard, fashion editor of Vogue , remained true to Chanel and positively reviewed her collection, proclaiming it classic. Ballard had a wicked pen. Before the war she was in Paris as Vogue’s American representative. She relayed daily dispatches to the staff. In one she recounted watching an unrepentant Chanel steer her dance partner as well as her rival, Elsa Schiaperelli, dressed as a Surrealist tree, into a standing candelabra at the Bal de la Forêt. Schiaperelli, in flames, was quickly doused with soda water by nearby guests.