World War II
In 1939, at the beginning of World War II, Chanel closed her shops, maintaining her apartment situated above the couture house at 31 Rue de Cambon. She claimed that it was not a time for fashion. and three thousand female employees lost their jobs. The advent of war had given Chanel the opportunity to retaliate against those workers who, lobbying for fair wages and work hours, had closed down her business operation during the general labor strike in France in 1936. In closing her couture house, Chanel made a definitive statement of her political views. Her violent loathing of Jews, inculcated by her convent years and sharpened by her association with society elites, had solidified her beliefs. She shared with most of her circle the conviction that Jews were a Bolshevik threat to Europe. During the German occupation Chanel resided at the Hotel Ritz, which was also noteworthy for being the preferred place of residence for upper echelon German military staff. Her romantic liaison with Hans Gunther von Dincklage, a German officer who had been an operative in military intelligence since 1920, facilitated her arrangement to reside at the Ritz.
Read more about this topic: Coco Chanel
Famous quotes containing the words world and/or war:
“What I like, or one of the things I like, about motoring is the sense it gives one of lighting accidentally, like a voyager who touches another planet with the tip of his toe, upon scenes which would have gone on, have always gone on, will go on, unrecorded, save for this chance glimpse. Then it seems to me I am allowed to see the heart of the world uncovered for a moment.”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)
“The war was won on both sides: by the Vietnamese on the ground, by the Americans in the electronic mental space. And if the one side won an ideological and political victory, the other made Apocalypse Now and that has gone right around the world.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)