4.8
May 15, 2013

“Coco Chanel, famed fashion designer & feminine icon, was a homophobe, an anti-Semite & a Nazi collaborator.”

 

“Coco Chanel, famed fashion designer and feminine icon, was a homophobe, an anti-Semite & a Nazi collaborator.”

Does it matter? “A lot of people in this world don’t want the iconic figure of Gabrielle Coco Chanel, one of France’s great cultural idols, destroyed. This is definitely something that a lot of people would have preferred to put aside, to forget, to just go on selling Chanel scarves and jewelry.”

For more: “Chanel and the Nazis: what Coco Avant Chanel and other films don’t tell you”. The Times (London)

Coco Chanel, she of Audrey Tatou’s sad and limpid eyes, was what was known post WW2 as a “horizontal collaborator.”

To be fair, many, many (even progressive) folks back then had all kinds of casually prejudiced attitudes. Via Reddit: “I don’t mean to be contrarian, but wasn’t everybody born in 1883 a homophobe and an antisemite?” Read the rest of the discussion at Reddit, here.

That said, to be an active Nazi collaborator (she tried to get the Nazis to help steal Chanel No. 5 from its Jewish owners during wartime) goes well beyond this.

Full story at Wikipedia: read it up, here.

~

So was Hugo Boss.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Boss#History

Not to mention, and far more recently, Mr. John Galliano.

Here’s our kind of response to prejudice, from back then, via J.R.R. Tolkien.

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