Lisa Chaney - Coco Chanel - An Intimate Life

As the seat of government, Paris was the prize sought by the numerous Resistance factions, and despite a large anti-Gaullist Resistance wing, expelling the Germans united them. To this day, opinion is divided over the military governor General Dietrich von Choltitz’s claim that he was “the savior of Paris.” Despite repeated orders from Hitler that the city “must not fall into the enemy’s hand except lying in complete ruins,” von Choltitz disobeyed, and on August 25, he surrendered at the Meurice hotel, the newly established headquarters of the Free French. 51On the following day, when de Gaulle marched his troops through the place de la Concorde to the Arc de Triomphe, and half of Paris turned out to welcome them, José Maria Sert gave a party for fifty to watch the triumphant parade from his balcony. Gabrielle, Lifar and Etienne de Beaumont were there, alongside many of their fellow “collaborator” friends. As de Gaulle was getting into his car, a shower of sniper’s bullets shattered Sert’s windows, and his guests leaped for cover under tables and behind doors. When they finally dared to emerge, they hear Sert apologizing for the “inconvenience.” As a typical mark of his bravura, he had remained on the balcony.

On August 29, with the arrival of the U.S. Army’s 28th Infantry Division, diverted en route to Berlin, a combined Franco — American military parade took place, again past the Arc de Triomphe. As the vehicles drove down the city streets, more joyous crowds greeted the Armée de la Libération and the Americans as their liberators.

With the liberation, the purging of the collaborators began. Before any organized legal trials could get under way, the épuration sauvage , the summary courts, were hastily set up by the Free French, or sometimes by vindictive crowds, initiated as often as not by a personal vendetta. In several thousand cases, these episodes resulted in execution. At the same time, in towns and rural areas across the country, women accused of “horizontal collaboration” were dragged out of their houses and publicly humiliated. Although shaving women’s heads for sexual infidelity wasn’t new, it isn’t clear why between ten thousand and thirty thousand women were treated this way in addition to suffering the added indignity of being paraded naked through jeering crowds. What people expected from these public acts and how they defined collaboration is still being debated. While appalled by the ferocity of this popular retribution, de Gaulle’s fragile government had little effective power and let the vengeance run its ghastly course. These are some of the most terrifying images of the liberation. 52

Gabrielle was a high-profile figure and was to experience an attempt to “cleanse” her when she was arrested by two representatives of the Free French. With an icy dignity, she made her way as quickly as possible out of her room at the Ritz; she didn’t want them to find Serge Lifar, who was hiding in her bathroom. There has been much speculation over the years as to why, following a few hours’ questioning, Gabrielle was released. What did she say in her defense, given that her friend Arletty, who had also lived with a German, was imprisoned for four months, then put under house arrest for a further eighteen? We have one small piece of information. A “top secret” letter, from the chief of staff of Allied Force Headquarters, was written in December 1944 referring to Vera Bate-Lombardi’s imprisonment in Spain. Following Gabrielle’s Modelhut debacle, she and Vera Bate-Lombardi gave different versions of what had come to pass. They both wrote letters to Winston Churchill, letters which contradicted each other.

Among several reports and letters from Allied Force Headquarters regarding this episode, there is one recording that “Mme Chanel has been undergoing interrogation by the French authorities since that time”; in other words, throughout December 1944. While Vera was stuck in Spain begging Churchill to help her get back to her husband in Italy, the British were eager to clear up the purpose of the women’s visit and determine whether she or Gabrielle were German agents. 53

Did the Allied forces ever know, however, that Gabrielle had apparently returned to Berlin to inform Schellenberg of the failure of her mission? We don’t know what possessed her to do such a thing. Aside from believing that she was a German agent — for which we have no proof — perhaps there is only one conclusion to be drawn from her visit. While her mission to Spain sprang from a grandiose egotism, her slightly cracked belief that she could take a hand in ending the war may have emerged from a desire to be known for something besides haute couture. Years later, her assistant would say:

Every morning she read the papers in great detail, from the short news items to the results of the races. To… the head of France Soir’s surprise, she knew everything about international news. She couldn’t help it: Chanel put herself in the place of heads of State. She thought about the decisions to make… She felt concerned, both as a national symbol and as a company director. Listening to her, one could even have thought that she was responsible for the situation. Mademoiselle found it regrettable that great men didn’t consult her. Already, during the war, she had taken it into her head to make Churchill sign peace. She had projects for Europe, which Mendès France judged discerning, and she wondered why L’Express didn’t repeat them. 54

Like a handful of thoughtful, rather than merely clever, fashion designers, Gabrielle came to believe that fashion was essentially worthless. Yet she had pinpointed more accurately than almost anyone before her what it was really about.

And her claim to be a maker of “style,” rather than mere fashion, was of particular significance to her because it signified something less ephemeral. She had staked her life on work, and this work had been the creation of a couture house. Without it, Gabrielle would have lost her raison d’être. She was quite right when she said, “I have a boss’s soul,” and she needed to feel significant. The success of her political mission would have put her into the history books in a way she felt was commensurate with her intelligence. Her return visit to a man as powerful as Schellenberg must have been a kind of proof to herself that she had been taken seriously on a far grander scale than merely for the creation of dresses. In company with many exceptional artists, Gabrielle understood her own worth because she lived so wholeheartedly in the present, but she also underestimated the value of what it was she had done for her century. Through dress and her lifestyle, she had made a genuine contribution toward forcing the first century of modernity to face up to what it was, something more than many of those in the political sphere ever managed.

With almost nothing to go on, we are left to speculate on the reasons for Gabrielle’s prompt release by the Resistance. Remembering Arletty, whose popularity with her compatriots had not been enough to set her free, Gabrielle’s fame alone can’t have been sufficient to procure her release. The routine speculation is probably the closest to the truth: an influential figure let it be known that no proceedings were to be taken against Gabrielle. It is said that when the British forces reached Paris, some officers had been deputed to make sure of her safety. They couldn’t find her. She was no longer at the Ritz or the rue Cambon, and none of the staff were forthcoming. Gabrielle was eventually found, keeping a low profile at a modest hotel on the outskirts of the city. It was said that the orders to discover her whereabouts had come from Churchill himself. 55