Having spent the last six months immersed in dark corners of various historical archives, researching a book on Coco Chanel, it has come as something of a surprise to emerge, blinking, into the light, to read a flurry of newspaper stories speculating that she was a Nazi.
The truth is more complicated, but then CHANEL WASN'T A NAZI would make less of a headline. That said, it would be hard to give an absolutely accurate account of her wartime activities in a headline, as she was operating in a world of double-dealings, double-crossings, and double agents.
Yes, she had an affair with a German officer, Hans Gunther von Dincklage, a playboy posted to Paris before the war; but his allegiances are as mysterious as his family origins: he had a British mother, and tended to speak English in conversations with Chanel.
Her relationship with Winston Churchill was warm enough for him to have written admiringly of her merits, and to approve of her relationship with his friend, the Duke of Westminster. She remained sufficiently close to Churchill to be able to write to him during the war. There has been much speculation about whether it was Churchill who intervened on Chanel's behalf when she was arrested after Paris was liberated.
There is much that is admirable about Chanel - her fierce independence, her refusal to follow convention - and much that remains mysterious, including the narrative of her past (one that she told and retold in a number of conflicting ways).
What is clear is that she wept on the day the Germans invaded Paris, and immediately closed her couture house. Thereafter, like other friends and contemporaries (including Cocteau and Colette), she found ways of accommodating the Occupation, proving - as she did throughout her life - to be a great survivor.
