Aug 13, 2011 at 10:30 am by Jenn

A photograph of Coco Chanel in the early 20th century

According to the new book Sleeping With the Enemy: Coco Chanel’s Secret War, fashion designer Coco Chanel was purportedly a Nazi intelligence operative. Biographer Hal Vaughan claims Chanel was recruited by then-boyfriend Hans Günther von Dincklage, who himself was a master spy.

From Vaughan’s website:

The book pieces together how Coco Chanel became a German intelligence operative; how and why she was enlisted in a number of spy missions; how she escaped arrest in France after the war, despite her activities being known to the Gaullist intelligence network; how she fled to Switzerland for a nine-year exile with her lover Dincklage. And how, despite the French court’s opening a case concerning Chanel’s espionage activities during the war, she was able to return to Paris at age seventy and triumphantly resurrect and reinvent herself—and rebuild what has become the iconic House of Chanel.

The story sounds harebrained—and hopefully it is—but, horrifyingly, Vaughan’s proposed timeline matches Coco Chanel’s Wikipedia page exactly. In fact, the one kernel of “news” here is that Chanel was a spy, as opposed to a mere sympathizer.

I swear to God, if someone manages to connect Fendi and Mussolini, I am finished with purses forever.

6 Responses to “WTF? Coco Chanel Was a Nazi Spy, Journalist Says”

  1. paige says:

    haha i can’t help but be reminded of zoolander. all of the fashion powerhouses are behind political assassinations!

  2. tg belguim says:

    stupid bitch

  3. avicutez says:

    This isn’t a shocker. She was a notorious anti-semite and cunt.

    People remember the glitz and glamour, but not the shitty person behind them.

  4. zelda fitzgerald says:

    i wonder. what on earth could she tell anyone? resistance spies are in rags this year…

  5. blasted1 says:

    Well, at least this explains one thing I’ve always wondered about….despite being psychotic, mass-murdering pigs, those SS uniforms made them look super hot! CoCo was Koo-Koo.

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