Chanel's War
Escape From France
Format:Hardback
Publisher:The History Press Ltd
Published:4th Sep '25
Should be back in stock very soon
INTERVIEWER: Well, let me make it easier for you. Which side were you on?
COCO CHANEL: On neither side, of course. I stood up for myself as I always have done. Nobody has ever told Coco Chanel what to think.
A few days after Paris was liberated from the Nazis in August 1944, the most notorious fashion couturière in the world collapsed on a hotel bed in Switzerland after escaping the French capital and certain death. How did an exhausted Coco Chanel get there and who helped her evade warring Allied and German troops?
For eighty years, this incredible feat of courage, luck, and ingenuity in the midst of immense danger has been deliberately shrouded in disinformation and secrecy by family, friends, wary governments, risk-averse business partners and fellow collaborators – until now. Using previously overlooked sources, including declassified French Résistance papers and evidence from organised crime figures, Chanel’s War can finally reveal what really happened to Coco Chanel at the end of the Second World War.
"In Chanel’s War, Richard Wallace does something most writers on this subject have not even tried: he keeps his feet firmly in the archives while still telling a story that moves. Drawing on French, German, Swiss and British sources, he patiently reconstructs not just what Chanel did during the occupation, but how she managed to walk away from it afterwards. His focus on the mechanics of escape and impunity after the Liberation – the lists, the interrogations, the quiet interventions – gives the book a sharp and unsettling edge. The result is a portrait of Chanel that is cooler, more forensic and ultimately more convincing than the familiar myths. A great read!"
-- Peter Deleuran, author of Reflections of War: Forgotten Photographic Archives of the Second WorldISBN: 9781803999791
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