Coco Chanel, Agent Westminster: The Nazi Spy Behind Chanel No. 5

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In 1909 Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel was selling simple hats from the Paris apartment of the textile heir Etienne Balsan, testing her designs on the women in his social circle. In 1910 the English polo player Arthur "Boy" Capel funded her shop at 31 Rue Cambon, though its lease barred her from selling clothes. The First World War gave her an opening: with silk scarce and women working, she made fluid garments from jersey, a fabric used for men's underwear. In 1921 the perfumer Ernest Beaux presented numbered samples and she chose the fifth. To sell No. 5 globally she formed Parfums Chanel in 1924 with Pierre Wertheimer, who took 70 percent, while Théophile Bader took 20 percent and Chanel kept 10.

During the occupation she lived at the Hotel Ritz with the German intelligence officer Hans Günther von Dincklage, and in 1941 she petitioned the authorities to seize the perfume company from the Jewish Wertheimer family under Aryanization laws. The bid failed because Wertheimer had transferred ownership to the aircraft maker Félix Amiot. Declassified files list her as Abwehr agent 7124, code name Westminster, and she was sent to Madrid to pass a peace proposal from Heinrich Himmler to Winston Churchill. Detained in September 1944, she was released, an outcome biographers attribute partly to Churchill's intervention. After nearly a decade in Switzerland, she returned in 1953, financed by Wertheimer, to answer Christian Dior's New Look.

• She chose jersey and navy and gray dyes because wartime shortages made traditional luxury materials unavailable.
• Wertheimer's 1940 transfer to Amiot, whose factories built German aircraft, protected the company from her petition.
• The 1953 deal gave Wertheimer all Chanel brand rights in exchange for a lump sum, a 2 percent royalty and her lifetime living expenses.
• The 2.55 handbag, released in February 1955, put a chain strap on quilted leather so women could keep both hands free.
• She was preparing her spring collection when she died on January 10, 1971, at 87.