Speaker 1: Oh, welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a podcast about
Speaker 1: Coco Chanel this week. How are you feeling? How are
Speaker 1: you feeling? How are we feeling about Coco so far? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Are we still down for that nickname? Court? I loved
Speaker 1: her for part one minus a few anti Semitic rants, yeah,
Speaker 1: the anti semitism, the fast fashion, but otherwise pretty good. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So now you're about to ruin my Coco Chanel fantasy
Speaker 1: and I'm not excited. But yeah, look, we can just
Speaker 1: make a whitewashed version of her life story for like again,
Speaker 1: Netflix or Hulu or somebody, and we can just cut
Speaker 1: out the whole, you know, ixnay on the atsien a
Speaker 1: part of it, and then we'll be good. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: know that's a good People do that all the time. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: make a lot of money. Let's just make a lot
Speaker 1: of money. Look when you when you've got Netflix money,
Speaker 1: which at this point is what like forty dollars, you
Speaker 1: don't have to apologize for anything. Um. So, Coco Chanel
Speaker 1: is riding high in the in the early nineteen twenties.
Speaker 1: She is rich as shit, She is the talk of
Speaker 1: the town. She is pretty racist, and the guy she
Speaker 1: loves is dead, but hey, she's friends with Picasso, and
Speaker 1: can you put a price on being friends with Picasso? Probably?
Speaker 1: She's also friends with the Grand Duke Dmitri, who is
Speaker 1: a former Russian noble exiled after the Bolshevik Revolution U
Speaker 1: Grand Duke Dmitri like the TLDR of his background as
Speaker 1: he was one of the guys who killed Rasputant. So
Speaker 1: this is like a dude that she parties with. Um,
Speaker 1: maybe has a thing with. Is the Grand Duke Dmitri
Speaker 1: pretty cool? Um? Is he a good guy or a
Speaker 1: bad guy? I mean he's a he's a czarist noble,
Speaker 1: so he's a bad guy, but he's not the particularly bad. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she will hang out with worse people. And he does
Speaker 1: not have a baleful influence on her. Mainly the thing
Speaker 1: that like, they spend a lot of time drinking and
Speaker 1: talking and whatever, and from his like stories of the homeland,
Speaker 1: she decides to launch a line of Chanelle clothing patterned
Speaker 1: off of Russian peasant clothes, which is again very successful.
Speaker 1: And it's also from her conversations with the Grand Duke
Speaker 1: that Coco gets the inspiration to create her own scent.
Speaker 1: And yeah, this is what becomes Chanelle number five, Right,
Speaker 1: everybody knows that CNN Fashion describes the process of concocting
Speaker 1: the soon to be infamous scent. Chanelle launched her eponymous
Speaker 1: number five perfume in nineteen twenty one. A year before,
Speaker 1: so the legend goes, she had challenged French Russian perfumer
Speaker 1: Ernest Bow to create a scent that would make its
Speaker 1: wear smell like a woman and not like a rose.
Speaker 1: The result was a mixture of eighty natural and synthetic ingredients,
Speaker 1: which Bow presented her with a numbered series of fume
Speaker 1: samples to choose from. She picked the fifth. The blend
Speaker 1: subverted the notion of fragrances as a symbol of high
Speaker 1: social class, instead pushing the idea that women could be
Speaker 1: multiple things, natural and artificial, provocative and pure. It was
Speaker 1: what I was waiting for, Chanel later said, a perfume
Speaker 1: like nothing else, a woman's perfume with the scent of
Speaker 1: a woman. I did hear one time that she picked
Speaker 1: something else first? I think did yeah, yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: think she picks like another one twenty two, like yeah,
Speaker 1: she eventually lands on five. But that's why it's Chanelle
Speaker 1: number five, because she's given a bunch of options, and
Speaker 1: five is the one she picks, and she's not only like, obviously,
Speaker 1: I guess it smells good. I can't think of off
Speaker 1: the top of my head what Chanelle number five smells like, Like,
Speaker 1: I couldn't tell you, but you know, everyone knows that
Speaker 1: it's a thing, right, you say Chanelle number five, and
Speaker 1: everyone has heard of it, which is it's like Coca Cola, Right,
Speaker 1: it's the Coca Cola of perfumes. At this point, I
Speaker 1: think it smells like department store kind of fright. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: probably that's probably fair to say at this point. And
Speaker 1: so the most interesting thing about it is how it
Speaker 1: became that ubiquitous, And this passage from how Vaughan's book
Speaker 1: describes the innovative way in which Coco is going to
Speaker 1: market her new perfume. To promote her new invention, Chanelle,
Speaker 1: like the shrewd peasant she was believed in word of mouth.
Speaker 1: She tested Chanelle number five by inviting friends to dine
Speaker 1: with her at a posh restaurant near Grass. Then she
Speaker 1: furtively sprayed guests passing by her table, and they reacted
Speaker 1: with surprise and pleasure. Pleased with the results, Chanelle returned
Speaker 1: to Paris and quietly launched her new venture. She didn't
Speaker 1: announce its arrival in the press. She wore it herself
Speaker 1: and sprayed the shop's dressing rooms with it, giving bottles
Speaker 1: to a few of her high society friends. Her perfume
Speaker 1: soon became the talk of Paris. She does kind of
Speaker 1: the department store. Yeah, no, no, non consensual perfume spraying.
Speaker 1: I do feel like the fact that they're marketing it
Speaker 1: a woman's perfume. They that's how it's marketed. Now, it's
Speaker 1: the same exact marketing. I mess with success, Sophie, you know.
Speaker 1: And then and then I think that the non consensual
Speaker 1: spraying is basically department that it is funny, Courtly, you
Speaker 1: brought up department store. She does kind of invent that too. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: some braun's just got to spray you. We would never
Speaker 1: have that episode of Friends with Joey. Sorry. If you
Speaker 1: got it, you got it. If you didn't get it,
Speaker 1: watch it. I feel like guns stores should do the
Speaker 1: same thing with mace, like you want, honey, where are
Speaker 1: you going with it? Yeah? No, it was a mace joke.
Speaker 1: It's fine. So the demand for Chanelle number five almost
Speaker 1: immediately exceeded. This blows up like basically nothing ever had before.
Speaker 1: It immediately exceeds Coco's ability to produce or distribute it.
Speaker 1: You know, she is a boutique fashion maker. She's very successful,
Speaker 1: but she does not have the kind of production capacity
Speaker 1: to mass manufacturer perfume. And so she starts looking for
Speaker 1: somebody to help her expand and an entrepreneur named Pierre
Speaker 1: Wertheimer makes her an offer. Pierre is the patriarch of
Speaker 1: a wealthy Jewish family, and he probably also is kind
Speaker 1: of in love with Coco Chanelle. Coco has kind of
Speaker 1: a love hate relationship with him because there's I think
Speaker 1: a degree to which she finds him a little charming,
Speaker 1: but also she's very racist. And more to the point,
Speaker 1: this deal that he's going to make with her to
Speaker 1: produce Coco's perfume, to produce Shanelle number five, it's going
Speaker 1: to make her incredibly wealthy, right, and it's going to
Speaker 1: make Shanelle number five an iconic product, but he gets
Speaker 1: most of the money from it. Now, wait, is this
Speaker 1: you said she'sist. Is this a Jewish man? Oh? Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's going to be a problem because the deal
Speaker 1: and you know whatever, these are all wealthy capitalists, So
Speaker 1: I'm not going to try to come down on like
Speaker 1: this person and is the right or the wrong. But
Speaker 1: he is taking on the primary financial risk by putting
Speaker 1: in a shitload of money upfront to create a production
Speaker 1: line to mass produce Chanel number five, right, And so
Speaker 1: he gets most of the money. Right. Coco makes a
Speaker 1: shitload of money. She makes more money than anyone could
Speaker 1: ever spend in a lifetime, and more money, in fact,
Speaker 1: than she is able to ever spend in her lifetime.
Speaker 1: But she will spend the rest of her life kind
Speaker 1: of obsessed with the fact that he's cheating her out
Speaker 1: of her fair share of the profits. And this is
Speaker 1: very related to the fact that he is Jewish and
Speaker 1: she is racist. Right, Yeah, it like that validates all
Speaker 1: of her I mean not really, but in her mind
Speaker 1: validates all of her. Like yes, And from where I'm
Speaker 1: sitting again, I'm not gonna like whitewashed Wortheimer because there's
Speaker 1: some critiques to make of him because he's a wealthy businessman.
Speaker 1: But she makes more money than she could ever have
Speaker 1: spent on this ship. So the fact that she's obsessing
Speaker 1: over the fact that this is not as fair a
Speaker 1: contract as she thinks it should be is. I don't know.
Speaker 1: It says a lot about her, obviously. I think that
Speaker 1: is more understandable because she grows up super poor. So
Speaker 1: maybe she has this kind of fixation because money was
Speaker 1: always so tight for her as a younger person. I
Speaker 1: don't know, but like her anger at the fact that
Speaker 1: she's not getting more money as academic because she is
Speaker 1: never able to spend close to as much money as
Speaker 1: she has. By the mid nineteen twenties, Coco had reached
Speaker 1: the absolute height of success in her business life, and
Speaker 1: she was about to reach a similar height in her
Speaker 1: personal life. In nearly twenty she made the acquaintance of
Speaker 1: a British socialite and aristocrat named Vera Bate Lombardi. Vera
Speaker 1: was famed for her beauty and had many influential suitors
Speaker 1: in the British nobility. She was one of these like, look,
Speaker 1: you're not going to marry me, but we're gonna have
Speaker 1: a good time, right And Vera is a big advocate
Speaker 1: of what was called at the time the sporting life,
Speaker 1: and this is kind of how British aristocrats spent their
Speaker 1: free time. They're going on a hunts, they're shooting pheasants,
Speaker 1: there shooting foxes, they're playing tennis, They're going on sailing
Speaker 1: advent is around the Cape of Good Hope or whatever.
Speaker 1: You know, this is what the elite spends their time doing, right,
Speaker 1: and that Vera is a big advocate of the sporting life.
Speaker 1: And because she is so beautiful and fucking a lot
Speaker 1: of these influential British aristocrats, she knows all of the
Speaker 1: people that are worth knowing in British high society. Now
Speaker 1: she falls in love with Chanelle because the sporting life
Speaker 1: is kind of difficult when you're wearing like a sixty
Speaker 1: five pound whalebone dress that's got like a ten foot
Speaker 1: wide like hoop skirt or whatever. So Coco's clothing, like
Speaker 1: the sporting life is kind of increasingly becoming a fashionable
Speaker 1: thing in late eighteen hundreds, early nineteen hundreds, and the
Speaker 1: fact that Coco starts coming out with these really comfortable, thin,
Speaker 1: like easy to wear clothing is huge for abroad. Like Vera,
Speaker 1: She's like, oh man, this fucking this lady makes the
Speaker 1: best clothing ever. And so Vera befriends Coco Chanelle and
Speaker 1: introduces her to English high society, which is the most
Speaker 1: closed and hardest to enter aristocratic set in European society
Speaker 1: at this point. And it's through Vera that in nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty three, Coco gets invited to a dinner at Monte Carlo,
Speaker 1: where she meets the Duke of Westminster, Hugh Richard Aartha Grosvena,
Speaker 1: known as Ben Door to his friends, and Coco quickly
Speaker 1: becomes a friend of Bendor. He is entranced by her.
Speaker 1: And you know, Ben Door is one of the only men,
Speaker 1: maybe the only man really she was likely to meet
Speaker 1: who has more money than her, because he is probably
Speaker 1: the richest man in Europe. He is the largest landowner
Speaker 1: in Europe at like near the height of the colonial period.
Speaker 1: This guy he has so this guy's got a lot
Speaker 1: of slaves. There's a couple of levels, basically essentially, but like, so,
Speaker 1: there's a couple of levels to having money. Right, There's
Speaker 1: like being middle class, which is when you can afford
Speaker 1: the stuff that you need, but you're not free of procarity. Right.
Speaker 1: There's upper middle class, where you can afford this off
Speaker 1: you need and most of the things you want, but
Speaker 1: you're not entirely free of precarity. And then there's rich, right,
Speaker 1: which is where you have all you have a lot
Speaker 1: of money, right, But there's a level and most people
Speaker 1: just think that, like, yeah, rich is kind of like
Speaker 1: the top of having money. There's a level above rich
Speaker 1: because rich people have money, the mega rich like Bendor,
Speaker 1: they don't have money. They just don't have They can
Speaker 1: never run out of money. That's a different thing, right,
Speaker 1: Having money is different than you Like Bendor does not
Speaker 1: spend money. Ben Door demands things and they are made
Speaker 1: for him or they come to him, right, Like his
Speaker 1: wealth is so vast that he effectively does not have money.
Speaker 1: He has a superpower, he has magic. That is the
Speaker 1: kind of rich this guy is, right, like this is
Speaker 1: this is like this is um, this is Jeff Bezos
Speaker 1: level right of wealth, except for more of it is
Speaker 1: actually in physical things for a guy like Bendorum it is.
Speaker 1: You cannot exaggerate how much fucking money this guy has.
Speaker 1: So like British, I mean usually it's old money, right,
Speaker 1: but you're year old. No, he is old money. He
Speaker 1: is inherited a lot of it. Um, this is old
Speaker 1: colonial money. He owns land all over the fucking place
Speaker 1: like that, he owns palaces, um, he owns a massive
Speaker 1: yacht that is like a gigantic floating English mansion, Like
Speaker 1: it's a country mansion that he had turned into a
Speaker 1: yacht so he could sail around but still live in
Speaker 1: an English country mansion like this, Like yeah, beyond rich,
Speaker 1: you know, like that's that is the kind of money
Speaker 1: this guy possesses. Like this boat sounds like a great
Speaker 1: way to die. Yeah, and again, nobody told him how
Speaker 1: much the boat cost. He just said, I would like
Speaker 1: a boat that feels like my country mansion and it
Speaker 1: was made, you know, like that's the that's the degree
Speaker 1: the kind of guy. This is. One of the women
Speaker 1: who spent time around Bendor later described him this way,
Speaker 1: a pure Victorian who had eyes for his shotgun, his hunters,
Speaker 1: jumpers and race horses, his dogs, while English women of
Speaker 1: his day had only to give birth to children and
Speaker 1: please their masters. A man who played it dropping a
Speaker 1: bit of sugar in its paper wrapper into hot coffee
Speaker 1: and with a chronometer in hand, timing how long it
Speaker 1: took to melt. A man who enjoyed hiding diamonds under
Speaker 1: the pillow of his mistresses. A man who could brutalize women. Okay,
Speaker 1: that has been door sexy. Yeah, that's what Coco thinks,
Speaker 1: and he is drawn to her in part because, like,
Speaker 1: as rich as he is, she is probably the only
Speaker 1: woman on planet Earth who he would number one be
Speaker 1: interested in, but who has no interest in his money.
Speaker 1: Yeah right, she doesn't need his money because she hasn't
Speaker 1: She like, again, he's rich as fuck, but like she
Speaker 1: has more money than she can ever spend. At one point,
Speaker 1: they have a spat over the fact that he's like
Speaker 1: constantly cheating on her, right, and she tells him all
Speaker 1: I want from you? He's like, basically, what can I
Speaker 1: do to make this right? And she says, all I
Speaker 1: want from you are the wild flowers picked by your
Speaker 1: own hands, right, Basically, I want you to actually go
Speaker 1: do a thing for me. And instead he has his
Speaker 1: servants get a bunch of wildflowers and lace them with
Speaker 1: jewels and give them to her because he just can't
Speaker 1: comprehend doing a thing. You know, he's not that kind
Speaker 1: of man. No, So what she is interested in? Addition,
Speaker 1: I think she does legitimately like this guy. She stays
Speaker 1: with him for ten years, right, she does. I think
Speaker 1: there is like an emotional connection that they have, and
Speaker 1: he seems to legitimately care about her to the extent
Speaker 1: that a man like this is capable of caring about
Speaker 1: other people. Um. She is also interested in his connections.
Speaker 1: And it's through ben door that Coco meets with the
Speaker 1: Duke of Windsor later Edward King Edward the Eighth, who
Speaker 1: then abdicates because he marries a common woman. Even don't
Speaker 1: yeh he is he is he is he is a
Speaker 1: hung out with Hitler. Not he is a he is
Speaker 1: a first name basis with Hitler Nazi. Um. She also
Speaker 1: meets with Winston Churchill, who, despite being pretty anti Nazi,
Speaker 1: is friends with all of these guys and hanging out
Speaker 1: with them. Churchill writes a lot at Churchill actually writes
Speaker 1: a good amount about Coco Chanelle. She is a good hunter.
Speaker 1: She's really good at like riding horses and hunting from horseback.
Speaker 1: And he's like impressed with how good she is at
Speaker 1: this stuff. He writes, I think he might have had
Speaker 1: a crush on her. He writes a decent amount about
Speaker 1: like her shooting animals and riding her horse and stuff. Um,
Speaker 1: he's very he finds her very impressive though. Um, And
Speaker 1: you know, all of these men, including Churchill, are incredibly
Speaker 1: right wing and all of these men, aside from Churchill,
Speaker 1: are huge fans of Hitler. So even Churchill, though, wasn't
Speaker 1: he a little anti Semitic? Oh yeah, I mean for sure, yes, yes, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah yeah, but he is he does like he is.
Speaker 1: One of the things you have to give Churchill is
Speaker 1: like he's not a not a Hitler stand right? Yeah? Um,
Speaker 1: but no, I mean they're all they're all biggots, they're
Speaker 1: all right leg homies with Hitler. Hitler. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: I like it. But all these guys are shitty. Don't
Speaker 1: get me wrong, It's just that Churchill is not that
Speaker 1: specifically fuck all of these motherfuckers. But there are tears, absolutely,
Speaker 1: there are tears of fucker rate. And the guy that
Speaker 1: she's like bumping with is that one is almost the shittiest.
Speaker 1: I would say, King Edward the Eighth is a little
Speaker 1: shittier than Ben Door. But yeah, it's it's good stuff.
Speaker 1: So in the late nineteen twenties and early thirties, which
Speaker 1: is when it's like kind of the mid twenties to
Speaker 1: the early thirties, like twenty three to thirty three, I
Speaker 1: think more or less, that's when Coco is kind of
Speaker 1: a really intimate part of this circle. So that's quite
Speaker 1: a lot of time, you know. They spend a lot
Speaker 1: of time together. The Duke of Westminster and his friends
Speaker 1: admired the Nazi movement, most particularly for its strong stance
Speaker 1: against the Jews. Lawrence James, author of a book called Aristocrats,
Speaker 1: claims what lay behind their support of appeasement was a
Speaker 1: fear of communism. What emerges is a picture of a
Speaker 1: knot of peers adrifted, an unconcus genial world united by paranoia, pessimism,
Speaker 1: and panic. So basically, the Bolshevik revolutions just happened. All
Speaker 1: of the nobility in Russia has been either murdered or
Speaker 1: forced to flee, and a lot of their wealth has
Speaker 1: been taken. Ben door. This is one of the few
Speaker 1: things he's got a fear is like with the socialism
Speaker 1: thing spreads over to England. Yeah, like I gotta shipload
Speaker 1: to louse um. So they support Nazison because of that,
Speaker 1: and because they're all anti Semitic, they see Bolshevism as
Speaker 1: a Jewish movement, right yeah, And these are the people
Speaker 1: that Coco's hanging out with. So this kind of this
Speaker 1: is when she I think probably moves from the normal
Speaker 1: level of anti Semitic in French society more or less
Speaker 1: too super racist because she spends ten years with the
Speaker 1: most racist in these guys. All they have is money
Speaker 1: and time to spin conspiracy theories, often about the Jews,
Speaker 1: and so like she's just kind of hanging out with
Speaker 1: them when they're like drinking and talking about this Judeo
Speaker 1: Bolshevism shit and how fascism is the only thing that
Speaker 1: can stop it. She's like, you got to meet these
Speaker 1: guys have really great YouTube channels. Oh man, these guys
Speaker 1: would have all been Tate stands absolutely. Lawrence James goes
Speaker 1: on to explain visceral anti Semitism permeated the upper classes
Speaker 1: between the wars. Jews were vilified as flashy and pushy
Speaker 1: arivests with a knack for enriching themselves when the aristocracy
Speaker 1: was grumbling about an often exaggerated downturn in their fortunes.
Speaker 1: And Coco, obviously, she's well prepared to embrace this bigotry.
Speaker 1: But Ben Door is going to not only kind of
Speaker 1: encourage this bigotry, but he's going to lend a sheen
Speaker 1: of class and education to the way in which she's racist.
Speaker 1: As how Vaughan describes here whatever channel's views on Bolshevism.
Speaker 1: Before nineteen twenty five, Ben Door tutored her on the
Speaker 1: evils of communism and confirmed her antipathy toward Jews. He
Speaker 1: shuddered at the word Marxism. He was notoriously homophobic. When
Speaker 1: his homosexual brother in law advocate free trade unions. As
Speaker 1: leader of the Liberal Party, Bendor revealed him to be
Speaker 1: gay to the King George the Fifth, ruining his sister's marriage.
Speaker 1: In the man's political career, Chanelle could match Bendor's homophobia.
Speaker 1: She is quoted as telling Paul Morand while in exile
Speaker 1: in Switzerland in the winter of nineteen forty six, at
Speaker 1: Saint Maurice's homosexuals, Are they not always hanging around women
Speaker 1: my beauty, my little one, my angel, continually strangling them
Speaker 1: with flattery. I have seen young women ruined by these
Speaker 1: awful queers, drugs, divorce and scandal that will use any
Speaker 1: means to destroy a competitor in Reek vengeance on a woman.
Speaker 1: The queers want to be women, but they are lousy women.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, she's a real piece of shit. This
Speaker 1: is the end of the sympathetic Coco. Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I p is she going back and forth from Britain,
Speaker 1: Great Britain to Paris, Like London and Paris at this time,
Speaker 1: she travels constantly, okay, and she's often like hopping a
Speaker 1: ride across the Channel or whatever on like a yacht
Speaker 1: or you know, she's got she has all of the
Speaker 1: money in the world. She has all these connections. And
Speaker 1: you know who else has all the money in the world.
Speaker 1: Our sponsors, not yet, not until you pay them some
Speaker 1: of your Ah, we are b a q that's how
Speaker 1: you spell back. So Chanel spends the worst years of
Speaker 1: the Great Depression with Bendor, and you know this is
Speaker 1: she is kind of completely divorced from regular life at
Speaker 1: this point. She's a very grounded upbringing, you might say,
Speaker 1: not anymore. As his mistress, she finds herself regularly at
Speaker 1: exclusive gatherings, these royal cotillions, where she'll be like drinking
Speaker 1: and partying with like literally the fifty or sixty most
Speaker 1: powerful people in the world. Pretty much. Bindor's palace, Eaton Hall,
Speaker 1: had fifty four suites and a staff who were changed
Speaker 1: trained to keep completely silent and just ensure that the
Speaker 1: guests never had to lift a finger. So while millions
Speaker 1: of people are starving all around the world while like
Speaker 1: the depression is at its worst. This is what Coco's
Speaker 1: up to, Yeah, would have been, could have used Amalata
Speaker 1: of her too. So she and the Duke of Westminster
Speaker 1: finally break up in the early thirties I believe it's
Speaker 1: thirty three, primarily due to the fact that Westminster wants
Speaker 1: an air and Chanelle is unable to get pregnant. She
Speaker 1: was also frustrated constantly by the fact that he cheated
Speaker 1: on her with clock like regularity. The two fought more
Speaker 1: and more as time went on, having a particularly rivaled
Speaker 1: argument after Bin Door brought a beautiful socialite onto his yacht,
Speaker 1: the Flying Cloud. His usual tactic was to calm Cocoa
Speaker 1: with a gift, and on this occasion he gave her
Speaker 1: a priceless emerald that had been carved out of one
Speaker 1: of the Empire's overseas colonies, something that's probably worth an
Speaker 1: incalculable fortune to day. And because they're fighting, she takes
Speaker 1: this massive emerald and she drops it into the ocean
Speaker 1: like a real life Titanic thing. Yeah, but instead of
Speaker 1: it being for whatever reason that lady did it, she
Speaker 1: just does it because like, fuck you were fighting. I
Speaker 1: don't even need this Emerald. I think she is like
Speaker 1: you can't buy me. That's like one of her vibes.
Speaker 1: It's just like, fuck off, rich guy, and I think
Speaker 1: that is That's one of the things that is really
Speaker 1: interesting and kind of as bad as she is endearing
Speaker 1: about her is that from the beginning she's got this
Speaker 1: like number one, I ain't going to actually stay with
Speaker 1: a dude unless I really am in love with him.
Speaker 1: And part of how I will make that, like, the
Speaker 1: only way to really prove that is to make sure
Speaker 1: that I am rich as shit, like so that this
Speaker 1: whatever I'm doing is totally my call, you know, which
Speaker 1: is interesting about her. It's one of the things that
Speaker 1: makes her a compelling person to read about. Now they
Speaker 1: break up, but there again, she's pretty good with her exes.
Speaker 1: They're friends for the rest of Bendor's life, which fortunately
Speaker 1: ends in fifty three, but Chanelle drifts away from him
Speaker 1: after kind of the early thirties. She spends a chunk
Speaker 1: of those years in Hollywood, where she designs clothing for
Speaker 1: actor just like a like less than a year in Hollywood,
Speaker 1: she makes clothing for actors and actresses in a bunch
Speaker 1: of films, but most of those movies flop, which is
Speaker 1: kind of one of her few brushes with failure. But
Speaker 1: her time there puts her into the acquaintance of the
Speaker 1: next great love of her life, a guy named Paul
Speaker 1: Era barn Garay, known to most as Paul Iribe, thank God,
Speaker 1: because I can't really say that last time. So Paul
Speaker 1: Iribe is a Basque man. He was, he's in the
Speaker 1: film industry. He had succeeded in the movie business as
Speaker 1: an art director for Cecil b de Mille. He was
Speaker 1: also a director in his own right in France. He
Speaker 1: was famous for being the illustrator of an erotic art
Speaker 1: book and also for being one of the first writers
Speaker 1: and illustrators for Vogue. So he's an artist. You know, Yeah,
Speaker 1: she's very drunk, well flaws. I'm sure you're gonna lay on.
Speaker 1: So in addition to being a very talented artist with
Speaker 1: a provocative wit, he is so racist. This guy, this
Speaker 1: guy is like Hitler level of racist, right um, and
Speaker 1: that has an impact on Paul aid because like Hitler's
Speaker 1: coming into power in this period, the far rights in
Speaker 1: a sent globally. You know, YadA, YadA, YadA, anti Semitism
Speaker 1: is in, you might say, Vogue and a Reb convinces
Speaker 1: Chanel that she could be a part of this big
Speaker 1: ground swell in racism. With a small investment and using
Speaker 1: her money, he relaunched a failed newspaper, Le Timoyne as
Speaker 1: a nationalist anti Semitic propaganda paper. And I'm gonna quote again, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Koko Chanelle founds a racism newspaper. Oh my gosh, cool,
Speaker 1: it's awesome. I can't believe you, like, learn what racism
Speaker 1: is and you're like, you know what, I'm gonna gotta
Speaker 1: be a newspaper about this shit. I want to pay
Speaker 1: for the town with how racist I am. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: gotta make a newspaper about how much I hate people.
Speaker 1: I can just only imagine her in modern times, Like
Speaker 1: I think she would have been just as successful. I'll
Speaker 1: tell you that much. Yeah. No, I don't disagree. I
Speaker 1: don't disagree. I just it's fascinating the parallels. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and she really like she is this kind of timeless
Speaker 1: capitalist ghoul because you can just imagine, Yeah, you just
Speaker 1: transfer today the internet. She wouldn't have been any less successful.
Speaker 1: She would have made most of the same calls and
Speaker 1: they would have worked about as well. She's like in
Speaker 1: this oddly fraught relationship with Bill Maher or something. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I would have been Bill mare today. So I'm gonna
Speaker 1: I'm gonna quote from how Vaughan. According to one biographer,
Speaker 1: Aribe was an elitist bourgeoisie supercharged with a with an
Speaker 1: irrational fear of foreigners. Reading his issues of Letemoine, one
Speaker 1: would think France was the eternal victim of some vast
Speaker 1: international conspiracy. The magazine was a timid echo of France's
Speaker 1: fascist and anti Semitic press, publications that supported French stormtroopers
Speaker 1: named the Hooded Ones, and groups promoting law and order
Speaker 1: in Italy and Germany. Biographer Charles Rue believed Chanelle's launching
Speaker 1: of Le Timoine with Ariba as editor and art director
Speaker 1: marked her transition from political indifference to a view of
Speaker 1: the future modeled on the opinions of Aribe, mixed with
Speaker 1: ideas and prejudices absorbed during her peasant and Catholic upbringing.
Speaker 1: In the February twenty fourth, nineteen thirty three edition of
Speaker 1: the magazine, Aribe had the brass to draw Chanelle as
Speaker 1: a martyred Mary Anne in her Ferrgian Bonnet, her naked
Speaker 1: body held by a collection of evil looking men with
Speaker 1: obvious Jewish features. France, according to a Ribe and Let,
Speaker 1: Timoyne was suffering from a conspiracy managed by enemies within
Speaker 1: called Samuel or Levy, the alien like Leon Bloom and
Speaker 1: the Judeo Masonic mafia, the USSR and read rabbles. Leon
Speaker 1: Bloom is like the leader of the Popular Front, which
Speaker 1: is kind of this like left wing progressive political movement
Speaker 1: that defeats the fascists and France during this period. So yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the bigot. This is all the shit that's in
Speaker 1: her paper. Yeah, oh my god, it's pretty bad. Yeah,
Speaker 1: now there's a good there's some good news coming Courtney,
Speaker 1: because Paula Reebe, like after a couple of years of
Speaker 1: this in late nineteen thirty five, he's he's paying, he's
Speaker 1: playing tennis, Coco's out sunning herself. They're having a great day.
Speaker 1: And this motherfucker drops the fuck dead of a heart attack,
Speaker 1: which is awesome, that's great, dead Nazi fuck him. But
Speaker 1: second time her boyfriends died, right, Yeah, she loses a
Speaker 1: lot of boyfriends. Yep. I'm just saying, you could really
Speaker 1: sell this fucking Netflix show. I know. I look, you're
Speaker 1: gonna have to cut a lot of the anti semitism.
Speaker 1: You're gonna have to You're gonna have to cast for
Speaker 1: Paula Rebe Who do we cast? Oh? Who's that guy?
Speaker 1: He's in? Um, he's in the new Star Wars movies.
Speaker 1: Everybody thinks he's handsome. Oh uh, you could probably do Padre,
Speaker 1: you could do Pedro. You could whitewash Paula Rebus, Pedro, Pascal. Sure,
Speaker 1: let's do that. You know what Courtney green Litt the
Speaker 1: Coco story asterisk? My question? Yeah, what's that fucker's name? Um? Okay,
Speaker 1: one sec? I want to know who you think is handsome?
Speaker 1: I don't. I'm so bad at like movie star names. Wow,
Speaker 1: I'm going I gotta say one thing. I appreciate. I
Speaker 1: just typed into being Star Wars handsome guy. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of potential options for that. You get Warwick Davis Um,
Speaker 1: which I think is awesome. I don't even know who
Speaker 1: that is. Warwick is the guy who plays the LEPrecon
Speaker 1: and the LEPrecon films. He plays a number of Adam Driver. No,
Speaker 1: not Adam Driver. I don't think Adam Driver's very good looking.
Speaker 1: He's the guy who's kind of like Latin. Oh I'm sure,
Speaker 1: I'm sure. Literally the entire audience is screaming at us.
Speaker 1: Yeah he was in Willow too, Yes, yeah, God, who's
Speaker 1: the fucking the guy who plays Anakin because everybody likes no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I'm so bad at names. He's he's
Speaker 1: a little person that was in Willow and actually it
Speaker 1: worked with a relative of mine and Willow. We're getting
Speaker 1: totally derailed. Sorry, you know, he's grab I just appreciate
Speaker 1: for his sake that he is the first pick and
Speaker 1: bing for Star Wars. Handsome guy. Good for you, Warwick, Yes,
Speaker 1: love you appreciate you. Oscar Isaac, God that was driving
Speaker 1: me crazy. Oh yes, okay, yeah yeah. Oscar Isaac is
Speaker 1: who I would cast as Paula Reeb in the whitewashed
Speaker 1: version of Coco's life where we pretend she didn't run
Speaker 1: a Nazi newspaper. But dope, yeah, isn't he? Ye? Look,
Speaker 1: he's a handsome man, Oscar Isaac. Yeah, you're once. He's
Speaker 1: he's he's Guadama, he's his Guatemalan and and I think
Speaker 1: he's going to be honest. That ship I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: but who are I mean, we're who are we casting
Speaker 1: for Coco? Right? We're going with somebody like in this period?
Speaker 1: Actually kind of maybe Aubrey Plaza is who I cast
Speaker 1: for Coco. She's kind of like her her late thirties,
Speaker 1: early forties around this time. I think, so, yeah, I
Speaker 1: think she could I think she could do and she
Speaker 1: really well yeah, honestly, I don't know who else you
Speaker 1: cast cast now, now that we've mentioned it, now, um, yeah, Aubrey,
Speaker 1: do it, do it, and do it racist. Let's just
Speaker 1: let's just go for it. You're going if you're if
Speaker 1: you're sticking with a French actress, you could do. Um
Speaker 1: Marian Courtier. I don't know who that is now, you don't.
Speaker 1: I barely I couldn't. It took me like ten minutes
Speaker 1: to figure out who Oscar Isaac was. Cool. Um, so
Speaker 1: you know, this piece of shit dies and good riddence.
Speaker 1: Very funny that he dies playing tennis. Fuck this asshole.
Speaker 1: This makes Oko very sad, though, because she loves the
Speaker 1: piece of shit, and she is made only the sadder
Speaker 1: because of the political currents that are going around in
Speaker 1: France at the time, as had happened in Italy, Spain,
Speaker 1: in Germany. The far right is on the rise in
Speaker 1: France and the mid to late thirties, but unlike in
Speaker 1: those countries, a united left wing popular front was able
Speaker 1: to rise up and block the fascists from power. We
Speaker 1: cover this somewhat in our Behind the Insurrection series. Nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty six is the year of the popular fronts electoral success,
Speaker 1: and it brings with it, as part of this big,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of left wing counterwave to the fascists,
Speaker 1: a wave of strikes by organized labor. There's a general
Speaker 1: strike on May twenty sixth, and by June the boutiques
Speaker 1: in the Ritz Hotel where Coco lived full time had closed.
Speaker 1: You know. Within a few weeks, Chanelle's salesgirls and seamstresses
Speaker 1: had joined the strike. Some four thousand of her workers
Speaker 1: in total start striking, and when Chanelle is informed of this,
Speaker 1: she so she learns her workers are on strike because
Speaker 1: her personal assistant has to sneak into the hotel from
Speaker 1: the back because the employees have a picket line out front.
Speaker 1: And Coco is horrified and shocked that her workers have
Speaker 1: decided to join this strike. She expresses the thought that
Speaker 1: they must have lost their minds. She calls them her
Speaker 1: little hands. That's what she calls her workers. I know
Speaker 1: she is a goal at this point, and she accuses
Speaker 1: them of having been infected by an American mind virus.
Speaker 1: List sit down, which is interesting to me that like today,
Speaker 1: when you talk about strikes, the French are like the
Speaker 1: first people you think about. But back in this day,
Speaker 1: when her workers go on strikes, she's like, this damn
Speaker 1: American striking virus. That could be us again, folks. So
Speaker 1: her workers meanwhile SAPs like all held signs. That's so
Speaker 1: like they would basically, you know, the workers at these
Speaker 1: shops would cover the windows with signs that said occupied
Speaker 1: because they were not. They weren't just like not working.
Speaker 1: They were sitting in her factories and her stores and
Speaker 1: refusing to either work or leaves so that nothing could
Speaker 1: be done, which is fucking rad. It's very cool. Chanel
Speaker 1: calls this a betrayal. She felt that she paid them fairly.
Speaker 1: She's particularly angry because she offered them unpaid vacation days
Speaker 1: and they weren't grateful. Can you believe that court now?
Speaker 1: They weren't happy with their unpaid vacation day day? Was
Speaker 1: she paying them fairly for the time. I don't think
Speaker 1: it's bad pay for the time. Obviously they're not happy
Speaker 1: with it, so I'm gonna trust them that it could
Speaker 1: be better. Yeah, that's clearly a their attitude. So she
Speaker 1: became convinced, I don't think like from what I've read,
Speaker 1: I don't think it was particularly bad, but clearly it
Speaker 1: could have been better, and it's about to get better
Speaker 1: because they go on strike. She becomes convinced that a
Speaker 1: civil war is imminent. Such insolence from the working class,
Speaker 1: that's the only thing it could mean, right bolshevisms around
Speaker 1: the corner. They're going to be hunting us down in
Speaker 1: the streets. This is the only logical conclusion to what
Speaker 1: if we had paid vacation days. You you live in
Speaker 1: a hotel and will never be able to spend all
Speaker 1: the money you have. Maybe we could have paid vacation days.
Speaker 1: She's like, no revolution or nothing, this is war again.
Speaker 1: Very little ever changes. So gold prices during this period
Speaker 1: skyrocket in France because Coco and all of our friends
Speaker 1: buy all of the gold that they can get their
Speaker 1: hands on because they're worried the cash is going to collapse,
Speaker 1: which is actually that's not unfair considering this is around
Speaker 1: like right after the Great Depression, right, like not unreasonable
Speaker 1: to be worried about that. Coco raged and roared as
Speaker 1: she sought to bring her laborers to heal, without success.
Speaker 1: They would not move on their demands, though ironically, her
Speaker 1: designs became even more iconic during this period because one
Speaker 1: of the big symbols of the strike is all of
Speaker 1: these Chanelle workers and their Chanelle suits strutting around in
Speaker 1: front of Chanelle's shops, refusing to work without a fucking raise.
Speaker 1: Pretty cool, So like they're advertising for her kind of well,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's the nicest clothing they have, right, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't know, it's what they do. Eventually,
Speaker 1: Coco is forced to concede after the leader of the
Speaker 1: Popular Front and the French labor movement sign a pact
Speaker 1: granting French workers a forty hour work week, paid vacations,
Speaker 1: collective bargaining rights, and compulsory schooling up to the age
Speaker 1: of fourteen. Coco fought to the last moment possible, but
Speaker 1: enraged eventually conceded. So fuck yeah, way to go workers again.
Speaker 1: Like every story that has a good thing in it,
Speaker 1: in this part of the twentieth century. It's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: that all ends well. And then on June fourteenth, nineteen forty,
Speaker 1: Germany invades Friends and things take a turn, shall we say.
Speaker 1: Within weeks, the Germans break the back of the French army.
Speaker 1: Paris has declared an open city to spare it from
Speaker 1: getting the fuck blown out of it, and as soon
Speaker 1: as the fighting starts, Coco is like, well, I'm not
Speaker 1: going to stay in fucking Paris. So she bounces to
Speaker 1: her nephew Andre. He's like an adult now, he's in
Speaker 1: the French army, he's got a family, he has a
Speaker 1: nice home in the countryside. He's done reasonably well for himself.
Speaker 1: I'm sure she helped. And she winds up just kind
Speaker 1: of crashing with his family in the countryside in their
Speaker 1: nice manner. For a while. Andre is on the imagine
Speaker 1: O line. I probably don't need to explain to you
Speaker 1: that he gets captured. That's not a I mean, it
Speaker 1: doesn't work all that badly for him. Sorry, I'm so,
Speaker 1: what's that line you just said? Oh, the imagine O line.
Speaker 1: So I shouldn't make assumptions like that. The imagine O
Speaker 1: line is so, you know, World War One goes pretty
Speaker 1: badly for everybody involved, a lot of a lot of murdering.
Speaker 1: So in order to like not have that happen again,
Speaker 1: the French build this big wall of fortifications across most
Speaker 1: of their border with Germany and the hope that, like, well,
Speaker 1: the next time they attack, will just kill them all
Speaker 1: with these gigantic like bunkers and forts. But they don't,
Speaker 1: you know, the imagine O line actually does its job
Speaker 1: reasonably well. The French. The Germans just move around it
Speaker 1: and then enter from that area anyway, it's a whole thing.
Speaker 1: But he's stationed in the imagine a line, the Germans
Speaker 1: get around them, he gets captured, he becomes a prisoner
Speaker 1: of war. Right, So, Coco and her family living in
Speaker 1: the countryside are mostly insulated from the opening stages of
Speaker 1: World War Two, but they are worried for Andre. You know,
Speaker 1: it becomes clear something has gonna ry when he stops
Speaker 1: sending letters. The mystery only lingered after the fighting ended
Speaker 1: and Germans occupied the French heartland. Coco found this as
Speaker 1: intolerable as she was separated from her businesses. That's the
Speaker 1: main reason she is frustrated about the German conquest of Paris.
Speaker 1: And so shortly after Adolf Hitler's triumphant visit to Paris,
Speaker 1: she returns home telling her family the Germans aren't all gangsters.
Speaker 1: Oh Coco, Oh Cocoa. One fun anecdote is that on
Speaker 1: the drive back gases and shuts such short supply and
Speaker 1: it's about to be rationed into extinction for regular people.
Speaker 1: Her chau fur has to fill the trunk with tin
Speaker 1: cans of gasoline in order to get her to Paris.
Speaker 1: Un't know, interesting context. Another thing I learned during this
Speaker 1: that I hadn't known is because the Germans when they
Speaker 1: take over, you know, most of France, because they rash
Speaker 1: and gas and people can't get it. A lot of
Speaker 1: French people convert their cars to beat to run off
Speaker 1: of like like like literally to run off of like
Speaker 1: charcoal and wood. So you just like stoke a burner
Speaker 1: and it makes your cargo. I didn't realize you could
Speaker 1: do that. That's kind of a cool idea. That is interesting. Hey,
Speaker 1: did she feel safe because the Nazis are in charge
Speaker 1: of Paris? Right, so it's like she had friends? Yeah,
Speaker 1: she's Coco, you know, I think she she has this
Speaker 1: kind of confidence that it'll be fine and there's a
Speaker 1: reason for this confidence, because this is the point at
Speaker 1: which Channell's life comes to intersect with a Prussian military
Speaker 1: officer named Hans Gunther von Dinklage. Now Dinklage had been
Speaker 1: born the son of a Prussian major and the daughter
Speaker 1: of a German merchant family. He'd been educated in England, though,
Speaker 1: which from this kind of worldly charm that German spies
Speaker 1: generally aren't good. In World War Two, the British basically
Speaker 1: catch all of them. Dinklage is about to become a spy.
Speaker 1: He's a very good spy because he has this kind
Speaker 1: of worldly background. So after World War One, where he
Speaker 1: serves in the cavalry, he joins the ab VI or
Speaker 1: ab there, which is like German military intelligence, and he
Speaker 1: gets sent to France in nineteen twenty eight, so he's
Speaker 1: there before the Nazis rise to power, and he's working
Speaker 1: as a secret agent for the German government disguised as
Speaker 1: a diplomat for the entire period from twenty eight up
Speaker 1: to the start of World War Two. And his job
Speaker 1: is basically to earn trust and sympathy with French high
Speaker 1: society people, with politicians, with the wealthy and He develops
Speaker 1: a perfect cover to do this because his wife is Jewish.
Speaker 1: So he's like, yeah, you know, we're here in France
Speaker 1: because of all the anti Semitism in Germany. We had
Speaker 1: to flee those Nazis, you know, we had to. Like,
Speaker 1: he's perfect double agent while he's fucking spying for the Nazis.
Speaker 1: And to make it more fucked up, he actually divorced
Speaker 1: his wife in nineteen thirty five before the Nuremberg Laws,
Speaker 1: which made it illegal for them to be married, but
Speaker 1: they continue to live together in France in order to
Speaker 1: provide for his cover. Oh, it's fucked up. It's totally
Speaker 1: fucked up. I guess she would stay because she needed
Speaker 1: to be safe. I don't think she had a lot
Speaker 1: of options. Yeah, I don't know. I'm not an expert
Speaker 1: on the her specific story or why she did it.
Speaker 1: It's messy, that's for sure. Yeah, when the Germans won,
Speaker 1: Dinklage returned to like because he leaves right before the invasion,
Speaker 1: he comes back after it succeeds because he knows France
Speaker 1: and the Germans need people in country who can help
Speaker 1: them run it. He and Chanel had known each other
Speaker 1: again before the war. He's kind of playing as this
Speaker 1: like exile in high society. He's a noble, so they're friendly,
Speaker 1: you know, they know each other, and then when the
Speaker 1: Nazis take over Paris, she runs into him and is like,
Speaker 1: oh shit, I know this guy, and he's kind of
Speaker 1: a good guy to know right now, so they start
Speaker 1: hooking up right the fuck away. It doesn't hurt that
Speaker 1: Dinklage is a dashing man in his own right, but
Speaker 1: he also provides her a pathway to respect and luxury
Speaker 1: in the tenuous reality of the war years. Gotta get
Speaker 1: that good Nazi dick. Yeah yeah. Von Dinklage, whose nickname
Speaker 1: is Spitz, is able to get Coco permission from the
Speaker 1: Reich to live in the Ritz Hotel in Paris, which
Speaker 1: during the occupation is only for Nazis and their approved guests,
Speaker 1: so she gets to keep living in her fancy hotel
Speaker 1: because she's kind of boinking this guy. She also gets
Speaker 1: high quality French cuisine, which is mostly restricted. Like actual
Speaker 1: French people are living on a starvation diet. The average
Speaker 1: French working person diet is like twelve hundred calories a day.
Speaker 1: During the war in the areas that the Germans are
Speaker 1: running at least, but you can get all of the
Speaker 1: good food in the Ritz, right because it's being served
Speaker 1: to Nazis and to Coco, who at this point is
Speaker 1: basically a Nazi. For an idea of like how bad
Speaker 1: shit is for regular French people, hospitals are bartering their
Speaker 1: wine rations for their patients because some of their patients
Speaker 1: are too sick to drink wine in order to get potatoes,
Speaker 1: which is the only food dense enough in calories to
Speaker 1: keep their patients from starving to death. Like, that's again
Speaker 1: how bad it is for regular people? While Coco is
Speaker 1: living in the Ritz, So yeah, that's good, awesome. You
Speaker 1: know who else lives in the Ritz, Courtney, Probably some
Speaker 1: more Nazis. I'm guessing more Nazis. Yeah, probably still Nazis,
Speaker 1: but also our sponsors. No, oh god, we'll fix this
Speaker 1: in post. Ah, we're back. I don't think we fixed
Speaker 1: it in post. Oh well, what are you gonna do?
Speaker 1: You know that it was really good? How can you
Speaker 1: blame them? I'm sure it fucking was. So we're back
Speaker 1: a good times. Um. So, while this is going on,
Speaker 1: Coco and her new Nazi friends they're holding feasts. They're
Speaker 1: having these like fancy parties in some of which you're
Speaker 1: pretty cheeky. One of the parties she has at the
Speaker 1: Ritz is one where like all it's like these these
Speaker 1: French collaborators and all these Nazi officials, and the Nazi
Speaker 1: officials aren't allowed to speak German, so they have to
Speaker 1: attempt to speak French. That's like the fun theme of
Speaker 1: this party, while everyone else in Paris is starving. German
Speaker 1: officers consciously wielded starvation as a weapon, which made it
Speaker 1: easier to compel behavior by awarding collaborators with rations. As
Speaker 1: one German officer in the Ritz stated, in times like these,
Speaker 1: to eat well and eat a lot gives a feeling
Speaker 1: of power. Yeah, yep, good guys. The Nazis sympathizers will
Speaker 1: often justify Chanelle's choice to collaborate by saying that she
Speaker 1: was simply looking out for her nephew. This is true,
Speaker 1: but it's also true that she saw to her own
Speaker 1: comfort first, although it was to protect Andre that she
Speaker 1: finally became an agent for the Nazis intelligence service. So
Speaker 1: she wants to get this guy, her nephew maybe son,
Speaker 1: out of jail, and that's why she agrees to start
Speaker 1: working with the Nazis and I'm gonna I'm gonna read
Speaker 1: a quote by Tim Ott Here Dinklage introduced his lover
Speaker 1: to another prominent obver agent, Baron Louis de Vaufreland, who
Speaker 1: allegedly promised to help Chanelle free her nephew in exchange
Speaker 1: for her service to Berlin. Sometime in nineteen forty one,
Speaker 1: Chanelle was registered as agent F seven one two four
Speaker 1: with a code name of Westminster, after her former flame
Speaker 1: You know She's Her Nazi nickname is her fascist boyfriend
Speaker 1: That's cool. Tasked with obtaining political information from colleagues in Madrid,
Speaker 1: Chanelle traveled to the Spanish city for a few months
Speaker 1: midnine forty one with Vafferland under the guise of business dealings.
Speaker 1: There is a record of her dinner with British diplomat
Speaker 1: Brian Wallace, which she casually discussed life and occupied Paris
Speaker 1: and the animosity the French and Germans held toward each other.
Speaker 1: It is unclear whether Channelle's interactions in Madrid moved the
Speaker 1: needle in any way, but there were apparently enough to
Speaker 1: impress ab their supervisors and earn the release of her nephew.
Speaker 1: So she goes on the spying mission in Madrid. Maybe
Speaker 1: it's to prep for a potential the Nazis are kind
Speaker 1: of considering occupying the city. There's there's a number of
Speaker 1: theories about what she's doing. This is the first little
Speaker 1: thing she does, and as spying for the Nazis go,
Speaker 1: it's not that sketchy, but it's about to get sketchier
Speaker 1: because once she's done the solid for them, they have
Speaker 1: a relationship. She's like, Hey, you know, there's this I
Speaker 1: kind of like spying. She's also like, so there's this
Speaker 1: Jewish family I got beef with. Oh the people who
Speaker 1: are making her perfume, the Wertheimer's. And she uses her
Speaker 1: position as an arian, which is a legal position in
Speaker 1: Nazi law, to petition German officials to lead goalies her
Speaker 1: claim as sole owner of the perfume. On May fifth,
Speaker 1: nineteen forty one, she writes to the Nazi official in
Speaker 1: her area who's responsible for confiscating Jewish assets. She lists
Speaker 1: her grounds for ownership of the perfume as based on
Speaker 1: the claim that perfumes Chanel is quote still the property
Speaker 1: of the Jews and has thus been legally abandoned by
Speaker 1: its owners when they fled the country. She wrote, I
Speaker 1: have an indisputable right of priority. The profits that I
Speaker 1: have received from my creation since the foundation of this
Speaker 1: business are disproportionate, and you could help to repair in
Speaker 1: part the prejudices I have suffered in the course of
Speaker 1: these seventeen years. But Coco has been out foxed because
Speaker 1: the Vertheimer's set shit up before they fled the country.
Speaker 1: They transferred ownership of the perfume firm to an Arian
Speaker 1: friend before they fled the continent, and during the war
Speaker 1: years they sent one of their allies. This is kind
Speaker 1: of a cool story. They send this guy who becomes
Speaker 1: the president of their company into Paris where he like
Speaker 1: sneaks in and pretends to be somebody else, and he
Speaker 1: steals the formula for Chanel number five so it can
Speaker 1: be produced in the United States. It's like this skullduggery action,
Speaker 1: but it's all about making perfew amazing. I love that
Speaker 1: they looked out for themselves. Oh yeah, they're smart. They
Speaker 1: knew what they were doing. They took care of their shit.
Speaker 1: So there are rumors that during the war years, while
Speaker 1: she is working for the Nazis, she is also working
Speaker 1: for the British royal family, possibly via Winston Churchill because
Speaker 1: her ex flame Ben Door and the former King all
Speaker 1: own property in Nazi occupied Europe, and the Nazis are
Speaker 1: fighting the British right. So the Nazis could take all
Speaker 1: that shit, they could destroy it, they could do give
Speaker 1: it to other people, and Chanel allegedly helps them protect
Speaker 1: their properties on the continent during the war. Right, we
Speaker 1: don't know if this happened. We do know though, that
Speaker 1: she stays in one of these properties after a visit
Speaker 1: to Berlin to meet with SS General authors Schellenberg about
Speaker 1: another operation. So by nineteen forty three, most of the
Speaker 1: smart Nazis around Hitler, including Himmler and Schellenberg, knew that
Speaker 1: the war was lost. The sheer scale of the tide
Speaker 1: that had turned against them in Russia made any hope
Speaker 1: of German victory nothing but a fantasy, and these Nazis
Speaker 1: went behind Hitler's back to try and make a separate
Speaker 1: peace through some of their sympathetic friends in the British government,
Speaker 1: including the former King and the Duke of Westminster. And
Speaker 1: this brings us back to our friend Vera Bate Lombardi.
Speaker 1: Remember Vera, She's that Italian British socialite who introduces Coco
Speaker 1: to the Duke of Westminster. You know, she had remarried
Speaker 1: an Italian fascist military officer near the end of the twenties,
Speaker 1: so she's not anti fascist, right, But Mussolini's government also
Speaker 1: didn't trust her because she was English. So even though
Speaker 1: she's married to this fascist, she's watched carefully by Italian
Speaker 1: intelligence services. During the outbreak of World War Two in
Speaker 1: nineteen forty three, horrendous reversals forced Mussolini briefly from power,
Speaker 1: and there's kind of this fascist crackdown to retake power
Speaker 1: in parts of the country, and the authorities arrest Vera
Speaker 1: during this crackdown. She spends about a week in an
Speaker 1: Italian fascist prison camp before the Germans intervene and get
Speaker 1: her out. And they get her out, so that Coco,
Speaker 1: because Coco's like, hey, if you get me and Vera together,
Speaker 1: we can go, you know, meet with our contacts in
Speaker 1: the British government and negotiate a separate piece, right, That's
Speaker 1: what Coco tries to set up. That's why the Germans
Speaker 1: get Vera out of prison. But Vera is kind of
Speaker 1: pissed off that she's been arrested by the fascists and
Speaker 1: put in a prison camp. She does not like this,
Speaker 1: so she's actually not gonna be a very good partner
Speaker 1: to Coco in this Nazi scheme of cocos. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I'm gonna yeah, it's pretty funny. I'm gonna rote quote
Speaker 1: next from a write up by PBS. Nazi leaders contacted
Speaker 1: Dinklage and told him it was time to leave Paris
Speaker 1: and Chanel behind. Unwilling to be left alone in Parish
Speaker 1: Channelle decided to devise a new plan with Dnklage, attempting
Speaker 1: to leverage Vera Bate's connection with Winston Churchill. Citing French
Speaker 1: historian Hendry Goodell, Vaughn writes, Mademoiselle Chanelle thought she could
Speaker 1: barter her friendship with Winston Churchill to persuade the Nazis
Speaker 1: that she and Dnklage had the contacts to broke her
Speaker 1: a separate piece with Britain. Goodell believed the Duke of Westminster,
Speaker 1: well known for being pro German, along with many other
Speaker 1: senior British politicians and royals, feared that the Soviet Union
Speaker 1: would grab all of Europe. The Duke encouraged Channell to
Speaker 1: act as an emissary between Berlin and London. However, the
Speaker 1: plan went horribly awry when Chanelle's friend Vera Bate, upon
Speaker 1: arriving in Madrid, confessed to the authorities her part as
Speaker 1: a German agent in the final hour, naming Chanelle as
Speaker 1: an informer. And so they get to Madrid and Vera's like,
Speaker 1: this bitious a Nazi. We're working for the Nazis. I
Speaker 1: don't want any part of the ship. Fuck these fascists, right,
Speaker 1: I respect. That blows it all up. I mean she
Speaker 1: did kind of come late to not liking the Fascists,
Speaker 1: to be fair, but where you know, however you get there, right.
Speaker 1: I was just watching this thing and it's crazy how
Speaker 1: many people are traders and double agents are ours. It
Speaker 1: happens all the time, constantly. So the fact that she
Speaker 1: has been exposed as a Nazi agent causes difficulty for
Speaker 1: Coco Chanelle. After Paris is liberated in nineteen forty four,
Speaker 1: she is quickly arrested by the Free French Purge Committee
Speaker 1: and accused of being what's called a horizontal collaborator. Now
Speaker 1: this is a serious allegation, and we know it's a
Speaker 1: true one. People were imprisoned and in some cases beaten
Speaker 1: or killed for less than what Coco did. Yet, after
Speaker 1: several hours of questioning, Coco is released, and nobody really
Speaker 1: knows why. There is suspicion that Winston Churchill negotiated her release,
Speaker 1: possibly is payment or to hush up the underground work
Speaker 1: she'd done with the Nazis protecting the assets of wealthy
Speaker 1: British people on the European continent may have happened. If
Speaker 1: it did, it means that Churchill himself was guilty of
Speaker 1: violations of his own Trading with the Enemy Act. But
Speaker 1: you know, we'll never verify this one way or the other.
Speaker 1: But pretty cool. Interesting, Yeah, yeah, some Churchill tea there,
Speaker 1: which I guess is just normal tea because he's English,
Speaker 1: but probably tea with gin, probably just gin with a
Speaker 1: tea bag in it actually. So at any rate, Chanelle
Speaker 1: gets out of this first thing with this French committee
Speaker 1: and she bounces. She goes to fucking Switzerland. She's like,
Speaker 1: and I staying around to see if this winds up
Speaker 1: being cool in the long term. Tim OTTs summarizes what
Speaker 1: comes next. After the war's conclusion, Chanelle appeared in a
Speaker 1: French court to account for sworn testimony from arrested German officers.
Speaker 1: That tied her to the ab There she managed to
Speaker 1: wriggle her way out of trouble, confirming that Raferland had
Speaker 1: promised to get her nephew out of prison, but otherwise
Speaker 1: denying the extent of their interactions. According to Sleeping with
Speaker 1: the Enemy, Chanelle also took care to erase evidence of
Speaker 1: her actions where possible. Upon learning that an ailing Schellenberg
Speaker 1: was planning to publish his memoir, ll paid his medical
Speaker 1: bills and and ensured his family was on sound financial footing.
Speaker 1: The subsequent memoir had no mention of her involvement as
Speaker 1: an agent. So when this old Nazi general is dying,
Speaker 1: she makes sets his family up. She gives them a
Speaker 1: fortune so that he doesn't write about her in his
Speaker 1: autobiography as a fucking Nazi spy shrimp shripe, very rude.
Speaker 1: So the fight over control of the Channel Perfume brand continues.
Speaker 1: You might think that Coco's involvement with the Nazis would
Speaker 1: have benefited the Wertheimer's case. This is not really the case.
Speaker 1: So so the Perfume is in their control legally, and
Speaker 1: they also have the recipe. But this is kind of
Speaker 1: their weakness in this court case. With her because probably
Speaker 1: if they were to fight this, they could like point out,
Speaker 1: you were working for the Nazis, we should get all
Speaker 1: of the money from their perfume. But this is Chanel
Speaker 1: number five. If Coco gets sort of dragged through the
Speaker 1: mud as a Nazi, people aren't gonna want to wear
Speaker 1: Nazi number five perfume, right, So the word him is
Speaker 1: there kind of an a vulnerable position here too, So
Speaker 1: they reach in Rather than like taking her to the
Speaker 1: fucking matt, they reach an arrangement with her, and a
Speaker 1: pretty weird one. Not only do they give her millions
Speaker 1: in back pay from the war years when she hadn't
Speaker 1: been making channel money, but Pierre Wertheimer agrees to pay
Speaker 1: all of her personal living expenses for the rest of
Speaker 1: her life. Weird us, Yeah, I mean weird. It's weird,
Speaker 1: but it's a complicated situation. She always winds up on top.
Speaker 1: You got to say that for fucking Coco, even after
Speaker 1: she's been caught. Is that, even even when she is
Speaker 1: fighting in court with the Jewish family she tried to
Speaker 1: like rob during the Holocaust, she wipes up on top.
Speaker 1: They're doing the same deal with her though kind of
Speaker 1: They're like we'll pay for all your shit if you
Speaker 1: just give us what we want. We'll pay for your
Speaker 1: shit if you'd stop fighting us in court, and if
Speaker 1: we don't have to actually fight you in court and
Speaker 1: thus distre roy your good name, right right, because no
Speaker 1: one else knows. The French society does not know. It
Speaker 1: is not public knowledge that she was working for the Nazis, right.
Speaker 1: The Vertheimer's know because they've got the people to do
Speaker 1: the digging. There's some folks in government and in the
Speaker 1: spy agencies that are aware, but publicly it is not known.
Speaker 1: And so the Vertheimer's just kind of decide, let's keep
Speaker 1: working with Coco because there's a lot of money in Coco.
Speaker 1: And in fact, the Verteimer family plays a major role
Speaker 1: in helping her return to the fashion industry in nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty four. They basically like put a bunch of money
Speaker 1: into her rebranding and like putting out new lines of stuff.
Speaker 1: She continues to be a massive success in an influential
Speaker 1: part of the industry until her death in nineteen seventy one.
Speaker 1: No public acknowledgement of her work for the Abvare was
Speaker 1: made until two eleven, when Sleeping with the Enemy was published.
Speaker 1: The pr campaign around that book and the well deserved
Speaker 1: buzz that generated created problems for the Chanelle brand. As
Speaker 1: Forbes summarizes, the brand described in the book a speculation
Speaker 1: and said it will, no doubt always remain a mystery. Today,
Speaker 1: the brand seems more open to acknowledging the standpoint while
Speaker 1: distancing the current brand from it. A spokesperson told me,
Speaker 1: Gabrielle Chanelle was a daring pioneer, and the House of
Speaker 1: Chanelle upholds and extends her extraordinary legacy. Her influence on
Speaker 1: many designers has been significant, and she continues to inspire
Speaker 1: new generations. However, her actions during World War Two are
Speaker 1: the subject of discussion in many publications and biographies. The
Speaker 1: actions that some have reported in no way represent the
Speaker 1: values of Chanelle today. Since that time in history, the
Speaker 1: House of Chanelle has moved forward, well passed well beyond
Speaker 1: the past of its founder, not quite saying yeah, man,
Speaker 1: she was a Nazi. That's fucked up, Like, can we
Speaker 1: still keep the stock high? Though? Please? We grew from
Speaker 1: her being a Nazi. We moved on from the founder
Speaker 1: being a Nazi. Now, the Chanel Corporation's attitude is not
Speaker 1: a universal belief, particularly among people inclined to analyze the
Speaker 1: fashion industry through a more skeptical eye. Tansy Hoskins, author
Speaker 1: of Stitched Up, the Anti Capitalist Book of Fashion, disagrees
Speaker 1: that we can separate Coco from her clothing. Quote. It's
Speaker 1: clear that Chanelle's far right ideologies influenced her designs. She
Speaker 1: championed minimalism and the austere. It's very white European and
Speaker 1: that's the note we're gonna end on. Okay, well, listen,
Speaker 1: I don't know if her style. That last thing on
Speaker 1: her style. I don't know much about style at all.
Speaker 1: This is just what someone said. Yeah, yeah, yikes, Well
Speaker 1: that's a life. That's a life. Yeah, you're gonna go
Speaker 1: pick up some channelle number five Courtney. Yeah, I can't
Speaker 1: wait to smell like that bitch. Yeah right, that's actually
Speaker 1: not a bad ad, just like a lady walking and
Speaker 1: like a perfume bottle. Can't wait to smell like that bitch.
Speaker 1: She's got a fucking red arm band with a swastika
Speaker 1: on it. Hell yeah, that's how you do still smell
Speaker 1: good after all that hell of her perfume. M hm, Well,
Speaker 1: coordinate how you feeling you know, I feel just so
Speaker 1: much internal conflicted feelings about this feminist icon who was
Speaker 1: a horrible person. But yeah, you know, that's what this
Speaker 1: show does. Was there was there anything uh to do
Speaker 1: with her, like the logo of Chanel? Yeah, Nazism. No, no,
Speaker 1: it's not a Nazi thing, it's her, it's Coco Chanel
Speaker 1: CC Well, I got a lot, yes, but I was
Speaker 1: just wondering if there was anything anything more to it
Speaker 1: than just that I don't know this shit in it.
Speaker 1: In both of the books about her her logo, I
Speaker 1: didn't find it interesting, so I didn't. I didn't include it, Sophie,
Speaker 1: because I'm a hack in a fraud. Now I don't.
Speaker 1: You're If you didn't find it interesting, then I no
Speaker 1: longer care. I was all about the Nazism stuff, all
Speaker 1: about all about that. Well, probably shouldn't say that. Don't
Speaker 1: be all about Nazism, she don't. Don't. Don't be about
Speaker 1: Courtney co Sacks plugables right now? Yeah, Courtney, what do
Speaker 1: you got a plug? Oh? You guys, if you like podcasts,
Speaker 1: I make a ton of podcasts. I make a new
Speaker 1: podcast for podcasters called podcast Bestie, and for writers, I
Speaker 1: make a podcast called The bleeders and for horn dogs.
Speaker 1: I make a podcast called Private Parts Unknown, and I
Speaker 1: am winding down my only fans, so you can go
Speaker 1: get some last pick sneak a peek at me naked
Speaker 1: at Coco peep Show. M hm, check it out. Check
Speaker 1: out Coco peep Show. Not to be confused with Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean Courtney very famously during World War Two, you
Speaker 1: fought for the French underground. Um. I like that, Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, um, yep,
Speaker 1: that's that's so support this Coco. Don't support the other
Speaker 1: Coco who was dead. Um, so I guess it doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: I guess at this point there's nothing you can do
Speaker 1: to harm her either way. So I mean that is
Speaker 1: kind of the thing, right, She won, like she she won.
Speaker 1: She played a hell of a hand, Yeah she did.
Speaker 1: She got she got a dog shit hand and like
Speaker 1: a terrible person, but god, you have to like admire
Speaker 1: the skill with which she played a zero hand, not
Speaker 1: a single fucking asset, but whatever was inside her head
Speaker 1: and made it work. Yep, yeah, yep. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: this has been a series of episodes about a fascist
Speaker 1: who was kind of impressive while being a fascist. Yay,
Speaker 1: behind the bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 1: For more from cool Zone Media, visit her website cool
Speaker 1: zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.