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Review
“[Hal Vaughan] ably demonstrates that Chanel was far from an innocent victim of circumstance during the second world war but a fully fledged Abwehr (German secret service) agent with her own number and codename: Westminster (no doubt a nod to her one-time lover, the Duke of Westminster). . . Vaughan, who writes with welcome economy and flair, deserves a lot of credit for finally unraveling the strands of Chanel’s deeply deceptive personality.”
—Tobias Grey, Financial Times
“[Sleeping with the Enemy] distinguishes itself from the many other Chanel biographies by tackling the dicey subject of Gabrielle Chanel’s activities during World War II . . . This is a frank and unsentimental portrait of a figure that fashion writers are nearly incapable of criticizing. . . While Vaughan’s discussions of Chanel’s contributions to fashion add nothing new to the extensive literature on her, he more than makes up for it with his impressive research and the never-before-seen information that he has unearthed about her wartime activities. . . . What Sleeping with the Enemy offers is a more rounded look at a figure who has been over-studied and under-examined.”
—Isabel Schwab, The New Republic online
“[A] compelling chronicle of Coco Chanel . . . a different Chanel from any you’ll find at the company store . . . by no means the account of an emerging style but a tale of how a single-minded woman faced history, made hard choices, connived, lied, collaborated and used every imaginable wile to survive and see that the people she cared about survived with her . . . Vaughan has gleaned many of the details of Chanel’s collaboration from documents that were scattered for years throughout European archives . . . It’s an astonishing story . . gripping . . . provocative . . . riveting history.”
—Marie Arana, The Washington Post
“Chanel’s war years, as explored by Hal Vaughan, are as camera-ready and as neck-deep in melodrama as Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds,” and just as hard to forget now that they’re exposed.”
—David D’Arcy, San Francisco Chronicle
"Hal Vaughan has done a stupendous job of research . . . Vaughan draws a brilliant portrait . . a terrific and fascinating story. . . wonderfully told, and full of great characters. . . Vaughan brings her to life so vividly that we understand why no less a judge than André Malraux said that "from this century in France only three names will remain: de Gaulle, Picasso, and Chanel.". . . It is that rarest of good reads, a biography about a famous person with a surprise on every page. Nancy Mitford, I think, would have loved it, and written a wonderful letter to Evelyn Waugh about it!"
—Michael Korda, The Daily Beast
—Tobias Grey, Financial Times
“[Sleeping with the Enemy] distinguishes itself from the many other Chanel biographies by tackling the dicey subject of Gabrielle Chanel’s activities during World War II . . . This is a frank and unsentimental portrait of a figure that fashion writers are nearly incapable of criticizing. . . While Vaughan’s discussions of Chanel’s contributions to fashion add nothing new to the extensive literature on her, he more than makes up for it with his impressive research and the never-before-seen information that he has unearthed about her wartime activities. . . . What Sleeping with the Enemy offers is a more rounded look at a figure who has been over-studied and under-examined.”
—Isabel Schwab, The New Republic online
“[A] compelling chronicle of Coco Chanel . . . a different Chanel from any you’ll find at the company store . . . by no means the account of an emerging style but a tale of how a single-minded woman faced history, made hard choices, connived, lied, collaborated and used every imaginable wile to survive and see that the people she cared about survived with her . . . Vaughan has gleaned many of the details of Chanel’s collaboration from documents that were scattered for years throughout European archives . . . It’s an astonishing story . . gripping . . . provocative . . . riveting history.”
—Marie Arana, The Washington Post
“Chanel’s war years, as explored by Hal Vaughan, are as camera-ready and as neck-deep in melodrama as Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds,” and just as hard to forget now that they’re exposed.”
—David D’Arcy, San Francisco Chronicle
"Hal Vaughan has done a stupendous job of research . . . Vaughan draws a brilliant portrait . . a terrific and fascinating story. . . wonderfully told, and full of great characters. . . Vaughan brings her to life so vividly that we understand why no less a judge than André Malraux said that "from this century in France only three names will remain: de Gaulle, Picasso, and Chanel.". . . It is that rarest of good reads, a biography about a famous person with a surprise on every page. Nancy Mitford, I think, would have loved it, and written a wonderful letter to Evelyn Waugh about it!"
—Michael Korda, The Daily Beast
Product Description
“From this century, in France, three names will remain: de Gaulle, Picasso, and Chanel.” –André Malraux
Coco Chanel created the look of the modern woman and was the high priestess of couture.
She believed in simplicity, and elegance, and freed women from the tyranny of fashion. She inspired women to take off their bone corsets and cut their hair. She used ordinary jersey as couture fabric, elevated the waistline, and created bell-bottom trousers, trench coats, and turtleneck sweaters.
In the 1920s, when Chanel employed more than two thousand people in her workrooms, she had amassed a personal fortune of $15 million and went on to create an empire.
Jean Cocteau once said of Chanel that she had the head of “a little black swan.” And, added Colette, “the heart of a little black bull.”
At the start of World War II, Chanel closed down her couture house and went across the street to live at the Hôtel Ritz. Picasso, her friend, called her “one of the most sensible women in Europe.” She remained at the Ritz for the duration of the war, and after, went on to Switzerland.
For more than half a century, Chanel’s life from 1941 to 1954 has been shrouded in vagueness and rumor, mystery and myth. Neither Chanel nor her many biographers have ever told the full story of these years.
Now Hal Vaughan, in this explosive narrative—part suspense thriller, part wartime portrait—fully pieces together the hidden years of Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel’s life, from the Nazi occupation of Paris to the aftermath of World War II.
Vaughan reveals the truth of Chanel’s long-whispered collaboration with Hitler’s high-ranking officials in occupied Paris from 1940 to 1944. He writes in detail of her decades-long affair with Baron Hans Günther von Dincklage, “Spatz” (“sparrow” in English), described in most Chanel biographies as being an innocuous, English-speaking tennis player, playboy, and harmless dupe—a loyal German soldier and diplomat serving his mother country and not a member of the Nazi party.
In Vaughan’s absorbing, meticulously researched book, Dincklage is revealed to have been a Nazi master spy and German military intelligence agent who ran a spy ring in the Mediterranean and in Paris and reported directly to Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, right hand to Hitler.
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.
Coco Chanel created the look of the modern woman and was the high priestess of couture.
She believed in simplicity, and elegance, and freed women from the tyranny of fashion. She inspired women to take off their bone corsets and cut their hair. She used ordinary jersey as couture fabric, elevated the waistline, and created bell-bottom trousers, trench coats, and turtleneck sweaters.
In the 1920s, when Chanel employed more than two thousand people in her workrooms, she had amassed a personal fortune of $15 million and went on to create an empire.
Jean Cocteau once said of Chanel that she had the head of “a little black swan.” And, added Colette, “the heart of a little black bull.”
At the start of World War II, Chanel closed down her couture house and went across the street to live at the Hôtel Ritz. Picasso, her friend, called her “one of the most sensible women in Europe.” She remained at the Ritz for the duration of the war, and after, went on to Switzerland.
For more than half a century, Chanel’s life from 1941 to 1954 has been shrouded in vagueness and rumor, mystery and myth. Neither Chanel nor her many biographers have ever told the full story of these years.
Now Hal Vaughan, in this explosive narrative—part suspense thriller, part wartime portrait—fully pieces together the hidden years of Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel’s life, from the Nazi occupation of Paris to the aftermath of World War II.
Vaughan reveals the truth of Chanel’s long-whispered collaboration with Hitler’s high-ranking officials in occupied Paris from 1940 to 1944. He writes in detail of her decades-long affair with Baron Hans Günther von Dincklage, “Spatz” (“sparrow” in English), described in most Chanel biographies as being an innocuous, English-speaking tennis player, playboy, and harmless dupe—a loyal German soldier and diplomat serving his mother country and not a member of the Nazi party.
In Vaughan’s absorbing, meticulously researched book, Dincklage is revealed to have been a Nazi master spy and German military intelligence agent who ran a spy ring in the Mediterranean and in Paris and reported directly to Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, right hand to Hitler.
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.
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Most helpful customer reviews
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars
So far so good,
By
This review is from: Sleeping with the Enemy: Coco Chanel's Secret War (Hardcover)
It's been a great read so far.It took a long time to get to my house though. Like a month from USA to Canada.
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Valuable insight,
By
This review is from: Sleeping with the Enemy: Coco Chanel's Secret War (Hardcover)
Valuable insight into what motivated the choices of some Parisians during the occupation. Although we may not agree with those choices, it is interesting to better understand the political, financial,social, and cultural context in which they were made.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
4.0 out of 5 stars (21 customer reviews) 82 of 90 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Can you ever experience Chanel No. 5 the same again?,
By Larry Mark "editor of MyJewishBooks.com" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Sleeping with the Enemy: Coco Chanel's Secret War (Hardcover)
In 1998, in The New Yorker, John Updike wrote, "All the evidence points to Chanel's total indifference to the fate of her Jewish neighbors - or indeed to the lesser deprivation and humiliations suffered by the vast majority of Parisians." At the age of 58, she was happy with her German lover and cared little for anything that occurred outside of her new perch at The Ritz. This book explores Chanel's rise and success prior to WWII, how she closed her business during the war, and her relationships and affairs with Germans, Nazis, and Vichy. The author asserts that she not only had a German lover, but she helped with espionage. Yet after the war and her nearly decade-long sojourn in Switzerland, she returned to Paris in triumph. The author also explores whether Chanel leveraged the Nazi Aryanization (make companies Jew-free) rules in order to get rid of the Wertheimer's control of Societe de Parfums Chanel (No. 5), so that she could gain full control. I found this to be an interested read and suspenseful, and it also makes you question if the wartime history of the founder affects the brand's image over half a century later.
34 of 37 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Coco Chanel and the Nazis,
By Jane M. Baker - Published on Amazon.com
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Sleeping with the Enemy: Coco Chanel's Secret War (Hardcover)
This work is well named. However, the name does not cover Chanel's treachery in serving the Nazis. Having grown up regarding Chanel as a splendid couturier, and Chanel Number 5 as an especially nice scent, I was disappointed in her virulent antisemitism, although she was far from alone in that. It seemed to be endemic in the upper classes of Western Europe and Britain in the 30s and 40s.Also I found her relationships with men like Winston Churchill and the Duke of Westminster quite surprising. That Churchill, knowing of her perfidious relationship with her German lover, Dinklage, protected her from trial and execution is quite appalling. There is little question that the Russian Revolution and the subsequent murder of the Royal Family horrified those in Europe that such a thing could have happened in any of the countries. Hitler saw Communism as greatly to be feared, as did the British and French. Also, historically German and England together have fought France, barring the First World War. There were remnants of that alliance referred to. It was interesting to learn how well the upper classes fared in Paris, and to see the ordinary people looking through the garbage for food. The pictures with which this book is studded are helpful, although very small on the Kindle. The research that went into this book is extensive. The writing is clear and informative. All in all, a good read. 22 of 25 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars
Fascinating read, but BAD writng,
By SeriousReader "cp-49" - Published on Amazon.com
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
I found this book to be extremely interesting and superbly researched. Although I am a fast reader, this book was very frustrating to read because it's so badly written. There's even a spelling error - the pin that women wear on their dresses or coats is not a broach; it is a "brooch." As an author myself, I am aware that publishers are cutting back on expenses, such editing and proofreading, but the huge chunks of out-of-place text and the disturbing lack of transitions, which made the reading of this fascinating book such a grueling experience, is something Random House (and the author)should be ashamed of. The author should have hired a good copyeditor and given him/her a couple of months to make this book what it should have been.Do I recommend it? Yes. But if you care about good writing, be pepared for a tough read. |
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