Welcome back to the Deep Dive. Today we are taking
on a giant. I don't use that word lightly. No,
not at all. We are talking about a name that
is practically synonymous with luxury, with France,
and with a very specific kind of effortless,
intimidating cool. We're talking about Gabrielle
Coco Chanel. It is a massive topic. You would
be hard pressed to find a brand with more global
recognition. Right. The double C logo, the number
five perfume, the quilted bags with the chain
straps. It is part of the cultural furniture.
It's, you know, it's the uniform of a certain
type of success. Exactly. But the mission for
today's deep dive is a little different. We aren't
just here to talk about hem lengths or, you know,
the price of a handbag. Not just that. We are
here to look at the massive, sometimes incredibly
uncomfortable gap between the brand, which is
all about this polished. minimalist, perfect
elegance, and the reality of the woman who created
it. Because when you dig into these sources,
and we have a stack of them today, including
biographies, business histories, and crucially
declassified intelligence files, the reality
is messy. Messy is a very polite way of putting
it. It is dark. It is complicated. And it is
filled with contradictions. It really is. I think
the central tension we need to explore today
is this. Coco Chanel is the only fashion designer
listed on Time magazine's list of the 100 most
influential people of the 20th century. That's
a huge deal. It's a huge accolade. It puts her
up there with Einstein and Gandhi. She liberated
women from corsets. She changed how we smell.
She changed how we view a suntan. But her legacy
is also... deeply marred by betrayal, by ruthless
ambition, and, as we will get into later, by
active wartime collaboration with the Nazis.
It's a study in branding versus reality, right?
How one woman's personal trauma and her prejudices
shaped the way women dress today. Absolutely.
And how a brand can sort of sanitize that history.
So let's unpack this. We have to start at the
beginning, or at least the beginning that she
tried so desperately to hide. Yes. Because one
of the things that stands out immediately in
the research is that Chanel was a compulsive
liar. about her own past. She was a myth maker
from day one. If you asked Chanel about her childhood,
the story shifted constantly depending on who
she was trying to impress or what narrative she
was trying to spin. So what was the official
story she told? Well, she claimed she was born
a decade later than she actually was, which is
a classic vanity move, sure. But she went deeper.
She told people her father sailed to America
to seek his fortune in the wine trade. Right.
A romantic, adventurous father. She painted this
picture of a somewhat tragic but comfortable
upbringing with wealthy aunts in a country estate.
It was all fiction. But the documents tell a
completely different story. A completely different
story. The reality was grim and, frankly, Dickensian.
Gabrielle Chanel was born in 1883, and she wasn't
born in a comfortable home. She was born in a
charity hospital in Saumur. Which was really
a poor house. It was a poor house, essentially.
Her mother, Jeanne, was a laundry woman who was
constantly sick. Her father, Albert, was an itinerant
street vendor who peddled work clothes and undergarments
from a cart. They lived a nomadic, hand -to -mouth
existence traveling from market town to market
town. There's this one detail from her birth
certificate that I found fascinating because
it really encapsulates her relationship with
her own identity. The name. The name. Her name
is misspelled on the official record. That's
right. It's recorded as Chasnell with an S. C
-H -A -S -N -E -L. It was a clerical error. And
how did that happen? Her mother was too ill to
attend the registration, and her father was.
Well, he was likely traveling or just absent,
avoiding the cost or responsibility. So some
clerk just wrote it down wrong. But here's the
telling part. Gabrielle never corrected it. Never.
Because to correct it legally would have meant
admitting where she was born. Would mean producing
the document that said hospice. It would reveal
the poverty. Exactly. She would rather live with
a typo on her legal documents for her entire
life than reveal the shame of her birth. She
took that secret to her grave. That sets the
stage for everything that follows. It's this
deep, deep shame about where she came from. And
things didn't get better. No, they got much worse.
Her mother died young, right? Yes, her mother
died of tuberculosis at age 32. Gabrielle was
only about 11 or 12 years old. And this is the
moment of the great abandonment. The abandonment.
Her father, the street peddler, didn't even try
to keep the family together. He sent his two
sons off to work as farm laborers, which was
effectively indentured servitude. And the daughters.
He took the three daughters, Gabrielle, Julia
Bertha, and Antoinette, to the convent of Abazine.
This is the orphanage. Correct. It was run by
the Congregation of the Sacred Heart of Mary.
It was an orphanage founded to care for the poor
and rejected. A stark, frugal, strictly disciplined
life. And her father just left them there. He
dropped them off, promised he would come back
for them, and never saw them again. Just imagine
the psychological impact of that. The abandonment
issues must have been off the charts. Completely.
And it forged this incredible self -reliance
in her, but also this profound... But here is
where it gets really interesting for us, looking
back at her designs. You can actually trace the
DNA of the Chanel brand directly back to this
dark, cold orphanage. Absolutely. If you look
at the aesthetic of Abazine, it's all grays,
blacks, and whites. It's austere. It's clean
lines. There's no clutter, no fuss. It's the
Chanel color palette. It is. That environment,
which she hated and tried to hide, seeped into
her visual vocabulary. And of course, it's also
where she learned to sew. The nuns taught her
the trade that would make her millions. But it
was more than just the sewing, wasn't it? It
was a whole philosophy. I think so. The philosophy
of less is more likely started there. It wasn't
minimalism as a chic choice. It was minimalism
as a necessity. It was the only reality she knew
for six years. And the visual cues are so specific.
So specific. The nuns wore black habits with
white wimples. That high contrast, black and
white, became the signature Chanel. look. The
patterns on the stone floors of the abbey are
said to have inspired the interlocking sea logo.
No way, really. It's one of the strongest theories.
The stained glass windows had these interlaced
patterns. And even later in life, when she built
her luxurious villa, La Pausa, the architecture
included staircases and patio elements that were
direct references to the Romanesque architecture
of that orphanage. So she was constantly trying
to escape her past, yet she kept rebuilding it
in her designs. She was processing it through
her work, consciously or not. It's fascinating.
So she leaves the convent at 18. She moves to
a boarding house in Moulin, and this is where
we get the birth of Coco. Right. She didn't start
as a designer. Right. She wanted to be a performer.
She did. She had aspirations for the stage. She
worked as a seamstress by day at a tailor shop.
But at night, she sang in a cabaret in Moulin
called La Rotonde. And what was this place like?
It was a café concert, a rowdy venue frequented
by cavalry officers stationed nearby. This is
a crucial detail, the military presence. She
was surrounded by men with status and, more importantly,
money. But she wasn't a star, though. She was
what they called a possess. A possess. What does
that entail? Basically, a performer who entertained
the crowd between the main acts. You sang a song
or two while the headliner changed costumes,
and then you walked through the crowd passing
a plate to collect money. So it was correct.
Yeah. Not glamorous. Not at all. It was humiliating
work, really. It was begging with a song. And
the name Coco, where does that come from? There
are two main theories, and both are interesting.
Theory A is that it came from the songs she sang.
She had a limited repertoire that included these
catchy, silly songs like Coco Rico, which mimicked
a rooster crowing, and Kikavu Coco, which translates
to Who Has Seen Coco, a song about a girl who
lost her dog. So the officers would call out,
Coco, Coco, when they wanted her to sing. And
Theory B? Theory B is a bit darker, but linguistically
plausible. It's an allusion to the French word...
Cocotte, which means a kept woman or a courtesan.
Given the environment of the cabaret where women
were often looking for wealthy protectors among
the officers, the nickname likely carried a double
entendre. It was playful, but it marked her social
status. And I assume she didn't make it as a
singer. No. She tried to get a gig in Vichy,
which was a more upscale resort town with a proper
stage, but her voice was described as marginal.
She realized pretty quickly that she wasn't going
to be the next great Chanteuse. She didn't have
the talent for the stage. So the stage door closes
and the bedroom door opens, if we can be that
blunt. We can. Because her entry into high society,
and really her entry into the world of luxury,
comes through men. She realized early on that
men were the key to the door she wanted to open.
It does. She becomes the mistress of Etienne
Balsam. He was a wealthy textile heir and an
ex -cavalry officer she met at the cabaret. So
he was her ticket out. He was. At 23, she moves
into his estate, the Chateau Royal Lou. And this
is a massive shift. She goes from the poorhouse
and the seamstress shop to a world of horses,
hunting, and pure decadence. This is where she
sees what the rich life actually looks like.
Exactly. And it's not just observing it. She's
participating in it. Balsan showered her with
diamonds, pearls, and dresses. But the interesting
thing is, she... projected a lot of the fussy
fashion of the other courtesans. She starts borrowing
from the men's wardrobe. She starts wearing equestrian
gear. She realizes she can't ride a horse aggressively
in a restrictive dress, so she wears trousers
or dodpers. She takes his tweed jackets, his
ties. She's adapting. She's adapting for comfort
and function. And she starts designing hats as
a diversion, just something to do while living
this life of leisure. She would take the hats
of the other women, which were covered in fruit
and stuffed birds, and strip them down, making
them simple, stark straw boaters. The Chanel
aesthetic is already there. It's bubbling up.
But she doesn't stay with Balsan forever. She
leaves him for his friend, which is a bit of
a scandal in itself. Yes, enter Arthur Boy Capel.
He is arguably the love of her life. Chanel famously
said of this time, She's very unsentimental about
it. Very. It shows how transactional she viewed
these relationships, even the most important
one. Capelle was English, from a wealthy industrial
family, and had a very different style than the
French aristocrats. He wore blazers. He used
jersey fabrics for his sports gear. He was a
polo player. And he puts his money where his
mouth is. He finances her. He sees her talent
with the hats and believes in her. He sets her
up. He pays for her first shops in Paris and
Deauville. But his influence goes way beyond
the bank account. You mean his style? His personal
style. His wardrobe inspired the Chanel look,
the blazers, the clean lines, the androgyny.
There is even a theory that the iconic square
design of the Chanel No. 5 bottle was adapted
from his toiletry bottles or his whiskey decanter.
That is wild. You look at that perfume bottle
today and you see the epitome of feminine luxury.
But it might just be a whiskey decanter from
her. English lover. It shows how she absorbed
everything around her. She was a sponge for style
cues that she could then refine and sell. But
this relationship ends in tragedy. A terrible
tragedy. Capelle died in a car accident in 1919.
It devastated her. She told a friend, in losing
Capelle, I lost everything. She never really
got over it, did she? It doesn't seem so. She
reportedly commissioned a roadside memorial at
the site of the crash. It hardened her. It fueled
her ambition. But it also left her very alone
at the top. She never married. And crucially,
she never relied on a man financially again after
that. Before he died, though, they had already
started the revolution. They opened boutiques
in Deauville and Biarritz. Right. And this is
where the brand really starts to take shape.
It wasn't haute couture initially. It was...
Deluxe casual clothing. And the timing was perfect.
Timing is everything. She opens in Deauville
in 1913. This is a seaside resort for the rich
right before and then during the start of World
War I. Women's lives were changing. And she used
her family as marketing. Brilliant marketing.
She used her sister Antoinette and her aunt Adrienne
as living mannequins. They would walk the boardwalks
in Deauville wearing her simple, chic creations.
Everyone asked, who are those girls and where
did they get those outfits? And she opens in
Biarritz in 1915, which was neutral territory
during the war. Yes. A villa opposite a casino.
It was a huge success. The wives of rich industrialists
from Spain and other neutral countries flocked
to her. The business was so massive, she reimbursed
Capell's entire investment within a year. By
1919, she is officially a registered couturier.
And the clothes themselves were radically different.
Let's talk about jersey. Today, we think of jersey
as just t -shirt material. But back then, using
jersey for women's clothing was... Insane. It
was scandalous. Before Chanel, jersey and tricot
were used almost exclusively for men's underwear.
Men's underwear. Yes. It was considered an ordinary
fabric. It was difficult to handle it, unraveled
if you cut it wrong, and it didn't hold a rigid
structure. Couture was all about structure boning,
taffeta, stiffness. Jersey was the opposite of
that. So why did she use it? Two reasons, and
both are classic Chanel. Functionality and cost.
Remember, she was cost -conscious in the beginning.
Jersey was cheap. She bought surplus stock from
a manufacturer named Rodier. But the bigger reason
was the aha moment about what women needed. Exactly.
The changing world. World War I meant women were
working. They were nurses. They were in factories.
They were volunteering. They couldn't be strapped
into corsets. They needed to move. They needed
to ride bicycles. They needed to be able to dress
themselves without a maid because the maids were
working in munitions factories. So she takes
this cheap underwear fabric and turns it into
high fashion because it allows women to actually
breathe and live. Precisely. She liberated the
body. She made the poor look expensive. It's
the ultimate subversion. She takes the fabric
of the working class and sells it to the aristocracy.
She basically said luxury must be comfortable.
Otherwise, it is not luxury. And speaking of
subversion, we have to talk about the suntan
because this is another thing we take for granted
now. But she basically invented the concept of
the fashionable tan. She did. And you have to
understand what a massive cultural shift this
was. Historically, pale skin was the mark of
the upper class. Right. It meant you didn't have
to work in the fields. A tan was for peasants.
It was a sign of labor. But Chanel goes to the
Riviera, she spends too much time on a yacht
with the Duke of Westminster, she sunbags, and
she comes back to Paris bronzed. And because
she is Chanel, suddenly a tan becomes a symbol
of leisure. It means you have the time and money
to sit on a yacht in the Mediterranean. She completely
flipped the script on class markers, just with
her own skin color. The power she had is just
staggering. And then, of course, the little black
dress. The LBD. 1926. Vogue publishes a drawing
of a simple black Chanel dress. They called it
the Ford of fashion, referencing the Model T
Ford. Which doesn't sound like a compliment for
high fashion, but it was. It was a massive compliment.
It meant it was the new standard. It was modern,
accessible, and ubiquitous. Before Chanel, black
was for mourning or for servants. She made it
chic. And I bet the establishment hated it. The
male journalists hated it. They complained that
there was no more bosom, no more stomach, no
more rump. They said she was erasing. the female
form. But Chanel didn't care. She said, I imposed
black. It's still going strong today. And she
was right. And it also became practical during
the Depression. Absolutely essential. It was
affordable elegance. You could have one good
black dress and change the look with accessories.
It was democratizing style. So by the late 20s
and 30s, she is the queen of fashion. But she
wants more. She wants into the perfume game.
Yes. And this leads us to what I call the perfume
war. This is a business saga that spans decades
and gets incredibly nasty. This is the seed of
the darkness that comes later. In 1921, she creates
Chanel No. 5 with the perfumer Ernest Beaux.
It was revolutionary, the first perfume to use
aldehydes, which gave it that sparkle. But she
couldn't make it and sell it on her own, not
at scale. No, she didn't have the manufacturing
or distribution network to sell it globally.
So in 1924, she strikes a deal with the Wertheimer
brothers, Pierre and Paul. And who were they?
They were the directors of the Bourgeois Perfume
House, the biggest cosmetic company in France
at the time. They had the factories, the supply
chains, the global reach. And the breakdown of
this deal is infamous. It is. The Wertheimers
put up all the capital. They handle production,
marketing, distribution, everything. For taking
on all that risk and for providing all that infrastructure,
they take 70 % of the profits. Okay. The broker
who introduced them, Theophile Bader, who founded
the Galleries Lafayette, he takes 20%. And Chanel.
She gets 10%. 10%. Now, at the time, 10 % of
zero was zero. So maybe it seemed okay. At the
time, she probably thought, I put in no money.
I do no work. I get a check. It was passive income.
But once None 5 became the biggest selling perfume
in the world, that 10 % nodded. her. She felt
cheated. She felt completely cheated. She referred
to Pierre Wertheimer as the bandit who screwed
me. She spent the next 20 years obsessed with
getting control of the company back. She hired
lawyers. She sued them. She smeared them in the
press. And that obsession leads us directly into
the darkest chapter of her life, World War II.
Yes. This is where the story shifts from a business
drama to a war thriller. So 1939, war breaks
out. What does Chanel do? She closes the couture
house. Immediately. She fires 4 ,000 employees,
putting them out on the street at the beginning
of a war. What was her reasoning? The official
line might have been, it's not a time for fashion,
but sources suggest this was retaliation. There
had been a general labor strike in 1936, where
workers demanded higher wages and better conditions,
and they locked her out of her own shop. Chanel
never forgave him. So she saw the war as an opportunity
for revenge. It seems so. She saw it as a chance
to shut it all down and put those women out of
work as punishment. That is incredibly petty.
But what she does next is, well, it's treasonous.
She moves into the Hotel Ritz. The Ritz was the
headquarters for the German military staff in
Paris. It was the epicenter of the occupation.
She didn't just live there. She lived there comfortably
in a luxury suite alongside the highest ranking
German officers. And she takes a lover. Baron
Hans Gunther von Dinklage, known as Spatz. Yes,
Spatz. Tell us about him. He wasn't just some
German aristocrat with a fancy title. He was
an operative in military intelligence, the Abwehr.
He had been a spy since the 1920s. He reported
directly to Berlin. He was a professional intelligence
officer. And he was her ticket to a comfortable
life during the war. He was. He eased her life
at the Ritz. He protected her. He was her ticket
to safety and luxury while the rest of Paris
was starving and freezing. And she decides to
use the Nazi occupation to finally settle the
score with the Wertheimers. This is truly damning.
She attempts to use the Nazi Aryanization laws
to seize the perfume company. Explain what those
laws were. These were laws designed to strip
Jews of their property, their businesses, their
homes, their art, and hand it all over to Aryans.
The Wertheimers were Jewish. So she weaponized
anti -Semitism for business. She did. She petitions
the German officials, writing that the company
Parfums Chanel is still the property of Jews
and claiming her indisputable right to sole ownership.
She tries to use the Holocaust, essentially,
to get a better business deal. That is chilling.
Does it work? No. The Wertheimers were smart.
They saw this coming. Before they fled to the
U .S. in 1940, they legally transferred control
of the company to a Christian friend, a French
businessman named Felix Amiot. And who was Amiot?
Amiot supplied aircraft to the Germans, so he
was untouchable. He was a collaborator himself,
but a useful one. So when the Germans looked
into the perfume company, it was technically
Aryan -owned. He was outmaneuvered? Completely.
Amiot held the company for them throughout the
war and then gave it right back to them afterward.
Chanel was outmaneuvered by the very people she
tried to destroy. But she didn't stop at trying
to steal the business. She actually became an
operative. We have the documents now. We do.
Declassified files from the French Defense Ministry
released after her death show she was listed
as an agent for German military intelligence,
the Abwehr. Her agent number was F7124. And her
codename was Westminster. Codename Westminster.
Why that name? It was a nod to her previous affair
with the Duke of Westminster, who was one of
the wealthiest men in Britain. It again shows
this bizarre mixing of her social life and her
espionage. She treated international espionage
like a social club. So what did Agent Westminster
actually do? Her big mission was called Operation
Model Hut. Which means Model Hat. Model Hat.
This was late in the war, 1943 into 1944. The
Germans were losing. Some of the SS leadership,
specifically Walter Schellenberg, who was high
up in the intelligence service, wanted to broker
a separate peace with Britain to avoid total
annihilation. And Chanel thought she could help
with this. She proposed that she could use her
personal connection to Winston Churchill, who
she knew from her days with the Duke of Westminster,
to act as an intermediary. She thought she could
just walk up to Churchill and end the war. Her
ego was that big. She believed her charm and
her connections could solve World War II. She
travels to Madrid with her SS. And what happened?
The whole plan collapsed immediately. She traveled
with a woman named Vera Bate Lombardi, who was
also connected to Churchill. But Lombardi, upon
arriving in Madrid, realized she was being used
as a pawn for the Nazis and promptly denounced
Chanel as a spy to the British embassy. So the
mission fails, the war ends, the Nazis are defeated,
collaborators are being shaved bald and marched
through the streets of Paris, or worse, executed.
How on earth does Chanel escape justice? She
is interrogated by the Free French Purge Committee
in 1944, but she is released within a few hours.
How is that possible? There was no documented
evidence available at that moment to hold her.
The files we have now were still hidden in German
archives. But the rumors and her own claims persist
that she played her trump card, Winston Churchill.
She told people Churchill had me freed. Why would
Churchill protect a Nazi agent? That is the million
-dollar question. The prevailing theory is that
Churchill wasn't protecting Chanel. He was protecting
the British aristocracy and even members of the
royal family. How so? Chanel knew everyone's
secrets. She knew which powerful British figures
had been sympathetic to the Nazis before the
war. A public trial would have aired all that
dirty laundry. It's very likely Churchill intervened
to keep a quiet and prevent a massive scandal
for the crown. So she goes into exile in Switzerland.
Yeah. She's safe, but she's out of the game.
For a while. She spends almost a decade in Switzerland
living off her perfume money. But she's watching.
She sees fashion changing. The 1950s come around
and Christian Dior launches the new look. And
she hates it. She loathes it. The new look was
everything she fought against. It was cinched
waist, padded hips, structured busts. It was
the return of the corset, essentially. It was
heavy. It was restrictive. What did she say about
it? She called it illogical. She said, Dior doesn't
dress women. He upholsters them. She couldn't
stand seeing her life's work of liberation being
undone by a man. So in 1954, at over 70 years
old, she decides to make a comeback. But she
needs money. And this is the part that blows
my mind. Yes. Who pays for the comeback? This
is the ultimate irony. Pierre Wertheimer. The
man she called a bandit. The man she tried to
use the Nazis to destroy. He finances her return.
Why? Why on earth would he do that? Business.
Pure pragmatism. He owned the perfume. The perfume
was still a cash cow, but the Chanel brand needed
the glamour of the couture house to stay relevant.
If Chanel faded into obscurity, the perfume might
too. So he needed her name to sell his product.
He needed her name. So they made a new deal,
a much better deal for her this time. She got
her wartime profits, which were huge, about $9
million in today's money, plus 2 % of global
matcher, five sales for life, and Wertheimer
agreed to pay all her living expenses. Talk about
failing upwards. She tried to ruin him, and he
ended up paying her rent for the rest of her
life. It's an incredible business story. So she
opens her comeback show, 1954. What's the reaction?
The French press destroyed her. They hadn't forgotten
the war. They called the collection old -fashioned
and made pointed references to her collaboration.
They sat on their hands in silence. It was a
disaster in Paris. But... The Americans and the
British loved it. They didn't care as much about
the politics. They cared about the clothes. Vogue
US hailed it as a breakthrough. They loved the
youthful elegance and the comfort. And an editor
bought a suit, right? Yes. Bettina Ballard, a
Vogue editor, bought a suit for herself right
after the show. And that sparked the sales in
the US. The American market saved her. And this
is when we get the icons that we know today.
The definitive versions. Yes. The comeback gave
us the Chanel suit as we know it. And again,
this is about engineering as much as style. The
jacket was cut on the straight grain so it didn't
buckle or pull. No stiffening. No shoulder pads.
And the chain and the hem. The famous gold chain
sewn into the silk lining of the hem just to
make it hang perfectly flat. It was all about
function. I read about the bus test. Yes. She
would make models step up onto a platform as
if they were climbing the high step of a bus
or bend down like they were getting into a low
sports car. If the skirt hiked up too much or
the armhole restricted movement, she would rip
it apart and start over. It had to work for modern
life. And the bag? The 2 .55? Launched in February
1955. Hence the name, 2 .55. And this bag is
an autobiography in leather. How so? The shoulder
strap. She was tired of holding clutches at parties.
She wanted her hands free for a drink and a cigarette
like a soldier's bag. Okay, that makes sense.
The chain strap. It echoes the chalains, the
keychains, worn by the nun caretakers at the
orphanage. The burgundy lining, that was the
color of the convent uniforms. The quilting,
inspired by the jockey jackets she saw in her
days with Etienne Balsan. She literally carried
her entire history on her shoulder. And sold
it to the world as the ultimate status symbol.
Let's touch on the jewelry before we wrap up
the legacy. Yeah. Because she had a very specific
philosophy there, too. She revolutionized jewelry
by mixing the real with the fake. She would wear
massive ropes of faux pearls mixed with real
gemstones from her aristocratic lovers. Her attitude
was, it's disgusting to walk around with millions
around the neck. I only like fake jewelry because
it's provocative. She made costume jewelry chic.
She made it a statement. She decoupled value
from preciousness. It was about style, not just
wealth. So in her final years, she's rich, she's
successful, the brand is back on top. Was she
happy? By all accounts, no. She became tyrannical,
bitter, and incredibly lonely. She worked constantly.
She was a habitual morphine user, a habit she'd
had since 1935. Morphine? Yes. She would inject
herself to sleep. she died in 1971 at the ritz
the same hotel she lived in with the nazis her
home for over 30 years her final words to her
maid were you see this is how you die wow Stark
to the end. It is. So let's try to synthesize
this. We have this woman who is a genius of design,
a pioneer of feminism and fashion, but also a
collaborator, a liar, and a generally difficult
human being. How do we reconcile that? I think
we have to view her through the lens of functionalism
and survival. She was a functionalist in her
clothes pockets, comfortable fabrics, freedom
of movement, but she was also a functionalist
in her morals. She did whatever worked. Whatever
she needed to do to survive and to win. Exactly.
When she was poor, she used men to get rich.
When she needed fabric, she used cheap jersey.
When the Nazis occupied Paris, she used them
to stay in the Ritz and try to crush her business
partners. She was utterly ruthless about her
own survival and comfort. You can't separate
the genius from the darkness. The 2 .55 bag literally
carries the memories of the orphanage. The perfume
bottle might be a lover's whiskey decanter. The
business empire exists because she made a deal
with the devil and then another deal with the
people she tried to destroy. Exactly. And she
died thinking she had controlled the narrative
that she had won. But here's a final provocative
thought for our listeners. When she died, she
had plans for a monumental state funeral in Paris.
She wanted to be celebrated as a French icon.
And what happened? As soon as she passed, French
intelligence released some of those damaging
documents we talked about. The files on Agent
Westminster. Suddenly, the truth was out. The
funeral plans were quietly scaled back. The state
stayed away. She was buried quietly in Switzerland.
The truth always catches up eventually. It does.
So here is the question for you listening today.
Next time you walk through a department store
and you see that white box with the black edges
or you see the double C logo on a handbag. Does
knowing the origin of the brand, the attempt
to use Nazi laws to seize the business, the spy
number F7124. Does that change how you see the
luxury? Or is the brand now bigger than the woman?
Has it successfully outlived her sins? That is
the question. Thanks for diving deep with us.
We'll see you in the next one.