Chanel was never tried for her crimes as a collaborator. She used her connections, information, and money to pay off the right people and cover her tracks.
She was briefly arrested and questioned by a French judge, but basically got off scott-free and allegedly told her family that she was freed by Winston Churchill.
Just so everyone is aware, Chanel S.A. is currently owned by the Wertheimers, a Jewish family that regained control of the brand after Coco tried to use her Nazi ties against them while the fled. Basically, at this point, it’s Chanel in name only.
I mean, I know the above is a great stroke of poetic justice & a fantastic corporate takedown (which tbh I would LOVE to watch a movie of) in a world which so rarely rarely rarely gets to see the master’s house dismantled with the master’s tools, so to speak—
—but my first thought was that that was the SICKEST BURN IN ALL EXISTENCE & tbh has me laughing my ass off. This is now one of my personal favorite revenge stories and I LOVE it.
ngl that was my reaction too, that is fantastic
(Coco fans can still fuck right off tho)
I didn’t know a Jewish family was back in control of Chanel now, that makes me so damn happy!
XD
This is WRONG. I’m a French historian and I studied Chanel for a long time and seriously can you think by yourself instead of believe stupid things like this ? She was the lover of a nazi for a time and that’s all. Plus Coco Chanel helped women getting emancipated with her clothes (no corset, short hair, short dress…). So before pretending to know French History please open a book.
I’m tired of Tumblr and people who think they know everything.
…except this information comes from a recent investigative book by historian & journalist Hal Vaughn, whose data comes from declassified WWII gov’t. documents, including from Germany and France both.
(also, I’d hesitate to call elevation of “low” fashion perfectly in line with other trends of the era, particularly as inspired by & pulling from other working class womenswear— no matter how chic or artistically innovative it may be— “emancipation,” but that’s neither here nor there #just my 2¢)
Hal Vaughn is only one person and History is made by a lot of point of view. Coco Chanel is not perfect, she was close to some Nazi indeed BUT she’s not a Nazi herself and this part of her life is quite unknown (and she was secret as a person). I don’t want to talk about this anymore here because Tumblr is really an awfull place for History.
Imagine thinking that having romantic relationships and close friendships with Nazis, along with publicly trying to muscle out the Jewish co-owners of your company by arguing that Nazi Aryanisation laws should be applied in your favour was just a minor character flaw that didn’t make you a fundamentally bad person.
Also, imagine thinking that documents showing somebody had a Nazi Abwehr codename and agent number was less important than the so-called “feminist liberation” of the clothes they designed.
“You can’t call Coco Chanel a Nazi! She emancipated so many women with her clothing designs! I mean, not al those dead Jewish and Romani women, obviously, but lots white European women got to wear short dresses because of her so, FEMINISM.”
Also, look, I have to say because this is my personal bugbear, but NO, Chanel did not liberate women by pioneering a new, freer style of dress. She was one of many and it was a longer process. I’ve written a ton of blog posts on this. It’s one of the most pernicious myths of fashion history, next to all the guff about corsets, which it’s technically a corollary of.
The Myth of Chanel and the 1920s: Introduction
I – A Sea Change
II – Standing Out from the Crowd
III – A Slender Pair of Shoulder Straps
IV – The Sole Survivors <– Particularly important for this discussion
V – Outdated Old Masters
VI – Femininity and Androgyny
VII – Jersey Cloth
VIII – Expensive Poverty
IX – The Bob
X – Rising Hems
This all may make me look like a deranged obsessive, but it’s important for a number of reasons. In this particular case, it’s important because Chanel was not a progressive with a mixed legacy, she was a former Nazi who was among the leading designers of her day, but was in no way especially revolutionary. She just got to come back to business after the Depression and World War II (which very few other Parisian couturiers of her generation were able to do, in part because they weren’t protected by Nazis), rewrite the past with herself at the center of it, and keep her name in the mouths of the public.
So if you want to defend her, I’m sorry, but you have to defend her based on her own merits rather than this story about her having “liberated” women through innovative clothing design.
