Chanel Win or Die
Richard Wallace

A few days after Paris was liberated from the Nazis in August 1944, the most notorious fashion couturière in the world collapsed on a hotel bed in Switzerland after escaping the French capitol and certain death.

How did an exhausted Coco Chanel get there and who helped her evade warring Allied and German troops?

For 80 years, this incredible feat of courage, luck, and ingenuity in the midst of immense danger has been deliberately shrouded in disinformation and secrecy by family, friends, wary governments, risk-averse business partners, and fellow collaborators.

But now, with the aid of new information contained in previously unreleased private French Résistance papers and a new assessment of discredited evidence from organised crime figures, what really happened to Coco Chanel during that fascinating and scandalous period of her life between 1944 and 1954 can finally be revealed.

These revelations, which differ significantly from commonly accepted Chanel facts, include:

• Debunking the myth that has persisted for over eighty years that Chanel’s old friend, Prime Minister Winston Churchill (operating through-the-personal intervention of his friend and Ambassador to France, Duff-Cooper) obtained her release from interrogation by the dreaded French Forces of the Interior (FFI) after Paris was liberated.
• Contrary to the generally accepted facts, Chanel’s former lover and revered Résistance commander, Pierre Reverdy, was the most likely person of authority to have arranged her release from FFI interrogation. Reverdy and his band of Résistance fighters were also the most well-placed, expedient, and well-informed source to have warned Chanel she had to leave France immediately when she was released.
• Evidence that demonstrates the only way Chanel could have escaped Paris in September 1944 was by paying the one outfit that was more powerful than either the Germans or the French authorities or even the Allies in the French capitol; an organisation that had the know-how, network and bravado to execute her escape; and who had unfettered access to all kinds of identity papers, plus a reliably fast vehicle with unlimited litres of precious fuel: organised crime.
• It was the legendary Gang des Tractions Avant (named after its preferred getaway vehicle, the front-drive Citroën 11CV Traction) that Chanel paid in desperation to evacuate her on the day she was released by Les Fifis and warned to leave Paris.
• Chanel’s fixation in exile with cellular therapy (also called live cell therapy) designed to arrest the aging process practised by Swiss surgeon Dr. Paul Niehans, that she proactively tried to cover-up along with her drug abuse.
• French Law No. 53-681 providing a total amnesty for offences committed during the Second World War which came into effect on 6 August 1953 was the decisive event that allowed Chanel to return to France. Without this change in direction and attitude of the French state, Chanel would still be languishing in exile.
• Challenging the dubious authenticity of documents exhibited at the V&A’s Gabrielle Chanel: Fashion Manifesto 2023 retrospective exhibition alleging Chanel’s membership in the French Résistance between 1 January 1943 and 7 April 1944 and her affiliation with the “Eric” underground Résistance network.
• The theft of Chanel’s clothes and jewellery from her rue Cambon apartment in the immediate aftermath of her death by former assistant Lilian Grumbach formed the basis of Christie’s 1978 auction of items personally belonging to Chanel.
• Chanel’s comeback collection in 1954 comprised only 30 pieces, some of which had actually been taken out of an old-box of outfits dating from the 1930’s in a desperate attempt to make up a meaningful number.