Like many of my peers, I grew up with my mother smelling of Chanel No.5 perfume. It was her favourite fragrance, and she had something of an infatuation with Coco Chanel. So I was very much aware of this fashion legend, but after watching the film Coco before Chanel I was even more intrigued by her life and her humble beginnings. So I suppose it was to be expected that I would rush out and buy, and dive headlong into, The Queen of Paris when it was published earlier this year.
Award-winning novelist Pamela Binnings Ewen did not disappoint. She affords the reader rare insight into the complicated persona of this fashion icon’s hidden life during the four years of Nazi occupation in Paris in the midst of WWII, which is based on discoveries in recently unearthed wartime files. The novel/thriller centres around the rumours and allegations that Coco Chanel worked as a collaborator and Nazi spy during the occupation.
Chanel is portrayed as a woman of substance with a complicated personality, probably owing to a tragic past as an orphan; her childhood marred by abandonment, not only by her father but also by the men she loves. She is also compelled to pretend that her son, Andre, who is born out of wedlock, is her nephew. Rising from poverty by using her flair and courage to create modern designs that capture the imagination of the world, Chanel is an interesting and powerful woman who is light-hearted, generous but also ruthless, manipulative and even cruel.
When the Wehrmacht comes marching down the Champs-Élysées, Chanel finds her home in Paris (the Hotel Ritz) invaded by the Reich’s High Command and surrounded by the enemy. This comes at the same time as her growing realisation that she is losing full control of her perfume company to her Jewish business partner, Pierre Wertheimer, who has escaped to the United States with the confidential formula for Chanel No. 5. Chanel’s income flow is further hampered by frozen accounts in Switzerland and she has little choice but to fight tooth and nail to secure the production of her flagship perfume, Chanel No.5 and to patent it as hers and as a French product.
Although her dwindling fortune is credited as the driving force that finally persuades her to use devious tactics such as anti-Semitism and to bend the new Jewish laws under the Vichy government to her advantage in order to reclaim full control of her company, it was my impression that it was rather her quest to free her son captured as a war prisoner that was perhaps the catalyst that led to her collaboration with the Reich.
It is a skilful piece of work offering insight into what Parisians must have endured during those four occupied years. It was a time undoubtedly wrought with fear, violence and covert operations, but the author also highlights the elite’s untouched extravagance and the lavish lifestyles of the European bourgeoisie against a backdrop of duplicity and moral bankruptcy.
Is Chanel the elegant, powerful and assertive socialite that she purports to be, or is she a lonely, addicted, desperate woman, trapped by a maze of circumstances beyond her control?
It is a fascinating read; a page turner and an excellent historical novel that reveals yet another part of the fascinating persona that was Coco Chanel.
