Elsa Schiaparelli

by Meryle Secrest

  Arriving in Paris in January 1941, Schiaparelli found all was well. Others might have their houses requisitioned, their valuables plundered and scattered, but nothing had been touched. That, she explained, was because the house was “under neutral diplomatic protection.” She did not mention the fact that she was still allowed to keep three cars although only seven thousand were licensed in Paris. The same thing was true at the Place Vendôme. After the surprise of seeing her back, she was received “with such warm gratitude,” and they were “so astonished that I should voluntarily be there, that I felt the risk had been well worth while.” Bettina and Gaston went to lunch with her in March 1941. Bettina wrote, “The Satans were still standing at the door with their mother-of-pearl whites of their eyes shining. The lustre [glassware] is still in wrapping paper. Elsa in all the same clothes, with her turban, her skunk coat, her blue suit with a red velvet collar, charming and adorable and sweeter than ever. Gaston and Elsa and I went in the Métro to Concorde, then Gaston to the prefecture and Elsa and I to do the shops.”

  Later that month they dined in Elsa’s cellar, Elsa wearing a long evening dinner dress with jacket, and Bettina a turquoise woolen embroidered jacket. It was during the London blitz, and Gaston remarked, “How like London!” as they sipped champagne in Elsa’s cave. Elsa was a jewel. There was no more real coffee to be had, but somehow she had charmed the Belgians and real coffee was being sent over from the embassy. Her guests were “open-mouthed in admiration at her resourcefulness.” Elsa was unhappy and desolate. She felt dreadfully about Gogo, who had betrayed her by going ahead and marrying in New York when she was not there. She was “everything I worked for and lived for,” and now this. Gogo’s version was that her mother was jealous and “I ended up eloping.”

  There were other reasons for Schiaparelli’s unease. So far she had sailed in and out of countries waving visas with impunity. She had managed to convince her American sponsors of her undivided loyalty while swearing undying love for Britain and telling the Germans whatever she told them about her admiration for the German Reich. It was a case of surviving, of whatever each faction wanted to hear, and she played the part convincingly enough to keep her real motives hidden. This, however, was only going to work for a while. Eventually she would have to choose. Looming in the background was the covert world of threats, betrayal, and double-dealing, of hostages and concentration camps. She was on the defensive, and perhaps she invented the story of a spy in her employ at the Place Vendôme whom she said she unmasked, and who was to blame for “many of my past troubles and others which were still to come.”

  Schiaparelli’s position was highly ambiguous as well as fragile. During the Occupation the central issue became the extent to which someone obliged to deal with the Germans was cooperating, or “collaborating” with the enemy, an issue that became murderous at the end of the war when there were so many private scores to be settled. The philosopher Isaiah Berlin, who was in France many times after the war ended, came up with a rough-and-ready definition of what constituted a collaborationist, or “collabo.” He said, “To survive, you might have needed to do business with the Germans, whether as a waiter, a shoemaker, a writer or an actor, but you did not have to be cozy with them.” What rankled with many about Chanel’s conduct was not so much that she took a German lover, but that she was seen to be eating gourmet meals in the best restaurants when others were starving.

  The fact that Schiaparelli had luxuries and privileges denied to others was bound to give rise to the question, on both sides of the Atlantic, of exactly who was protecting her. It was obvious that if Abetz, with his enormous power, was being asked for favors, he would exact favors in return. What price was she paying for her special treatment? She wrote, “The pressure against me, though indefinite, was increasingly oppressive. Although I avoided every issue … I found myself rather on the spot.” It was becoming clear to her that she could not count indefinitely on the zone of neutrality she had painstakingly erected around herself. The German occupiers were becoming too suspicious. They were gaining sympathizers in her own field and suspecting her of being an Anglophile. They were “by now fully aware of [my] tricks,” she thought. Meantime, her fashion house and perfume business had been placed under the control of a German commissioner, Dr. Karl Klugman, and her bank accounts frozen.

  That winter of 1940–41 was bitter, a constant hunt for food and fuel, the worst of the war. Alistair Horne wrote, “With unforgiving suddenness the average daily intake of food was reduced to 1,300 calories … Invidious comparisons were made with the sieges of 1580 and 1870; certainly even at the darkest moments of the First World War there had never been such privation …” There was little or no gasoline, and people travelled by bus, Métro, or bicycle. The streets were empty, as were the restaurants. On the other hand, Paris had never been so calm and beautiful. In the blackout, as one bicycled along the quais, “the little lights of the other bicycles are like fireflies,” Vogue reported. “Without glare of lamps and head-lights you trace against the long twilight that unrivalled sky-line of spires, palace roofs and trees.”

  If the Germans were beginning to suspect Schiaparelli’s motives, the Americans were soon to follow, and the French already had. A confidential report made for De Gaulle noted, “Those who knew Mme Schiaparelli maintained that, politically speaking, she had always been guided by feelings of snobbism and opportunism and capable of feeling at ease in circles of the extreme right …” The same report noted sourly that her employees had felt abandoned when she hurriedly left for her American tour (probably true). She was described as headstrong and willful, the sort of person who picked up and left without a backward look.

  Other questions were being asked as a result of Schiaparelli’s thirty-city lecture tour of 1940. According to the report Dora Loues Miller made for the OSS, shortly after the tour began she was contacted by Norma Abrams, a reporter for the New York Daily News, who had heard rumors about Schiaparelli’s supposed loyalty and wondered whether the OSS had begun an investigation of her circle of friends and movements. In particular she raised the question of Schiaparelli’s French lawyer, a certain Armand Albert Grégoire. Before France fell, Grégoire had appeared in a French military court charged with espionage. That took place in April 1940. But when the Germans arrived, Grégoire’s fortunes changed dramatically, and he became “the most sought after” attorney in occupied France. He represented high Nazi officials and entered the U.S. in March 1941 as unofficial representative of the German Embassy in Paris and Otto Abetz in particular.

  Elsa, arriving in the U.S. in 1939. Everyone thinks she is a spy. (illustration credit 10.4)

  How long Grégoire worked for Schiaparelli is not clear, but in 1942 she was defending herself against the charge that she knew about his clandestine activities. She said that she engaged his services in 1938 because he was bilingual and had represented some big U.S. companies like Eastman Kodak and Harper’s Bazaar. She had no idea his relations with the German authorities were “friendly,” as she put it. In fact she was horrified to discover, on her return to Paris in 1941, that Grégoire had “requisitioned” one of her cars without permission and put Nazi plates on it. Adding insult to injury, he came to pick her up at the station driving this car. That really seemed to upset her. Her protestations to the contrary, it seems highly unlikely that Schiaparelli did not know exactly who Grégoire was and the advantages of dealing with him. Parkinson said Grégoire claimed that he could liquidate any business in Paris and release the funds. Parkinson did not understand how Grégoire could possibly arrange this, as “it was impossible to get so much as a letter in and out of Paris.” After the U.S. entered the war, Grégoire, then in New York, was apprehended as a dangerous enemy alien and interned. Dora Loues Miller’s report concluded that in France, Schiaparelli was considered “one of the most active collaborators …” Her display of patriotism was a sham.

  Other allegations were made in a letter to the gossip columnist Walter Winchell of the New York Dai
ly Mirror in June 1940. It was from E. L. Courmand, a New York specialist in French imports, who had dated Schiaparelli for several months. Courmand claimed that Schiaparelli had set up an espionage system within her own company, encouraging her Italian doorman to gossip with her customers’ chauffeurs while their cars were parked outside the Place Vendôme. Her mannequins were instructed to remember everything they overheard and to report the conversations back to Madame. She employed a German as manager of her New York perfume business, named Wolfe J. Overhamm, who went by various aliases and was rumored to be an espionage and propaganda agent. He would be named “a dangerous enemy alien” in 1942. Courmand claimed that Overhamm had been fired from four jobs because of shady dealings. Schiaparelli was consorting socially, not only with people like Bergery, architect of the new Vichy order, Abetz, and Grégoire, but Edda Mussolini Ciano, the Duce’s daughter, and the Goebbels and Goering families. He wrote, “She brazenly sails right into our midst and into PRINT; she even radioed from the ship en route here—she is as bold as Benito and I’ll bet you do nothing about it.” Since this report had enough inaccuracies (Schiaparelli arrived by air) and questionable assertions, the author was right that nothing was done at the time. But the report was sent on to the FBI with a written note, “To John Edgar Hoover at once!,” underlined.

  In due course the case was referred to Special Agent B. E. Sackett. Sackett investigated. Schiaparelli certainly did say that Paris would continue to be preeminent. She also poured cold water on the idea that American talent could possibly replace haute couture. Perhaps she had been paid to say so by “German-controlled French government officials.” It could be that the Nazis had offered her big money to help retain French fashion authority. These matters were entirely outside the FBI’s province, Sackett said with apparent good humor. Just the same, he promised to keep an eye on her. But in the fall of 1940 something happened to change his mind. Overhamm, in San Francisco, was asked by a reporter, “Don’t you think the French will live in London?” He replied, “There is going to be no England when the Germans finish [with it].” Suddenly the bureau was taking a closer look at Schiaparelli’s affairs, and she was officially suspected of having set up “an espionage system” by no less than Hoover himself.

  The British were also on Schiaparelli’s trail. Back in 1937, when Henry Horne financed Schiaparelli’s successful effort to buy back the American branch of her perfume business, his terms—overall chairmanship, 50 percent of the American profits—must have seemed a fair price to pay. But shortly after war began, Schiaparelli discovered that her London branch, as controlled by Henry, had been borrowing heavily even as demand for such luxury items was shrinking. The business was bankrupt, and so was Henry. There must have been recriminations personally and professionally. Henry offered to resign in 1940, and his offer was accepted. The collapse of the London venture would cost Schiaparelli many sleepless nights and heavy legal fees in an effort to buy back control of the defunct business. She had good reason to be exasperated, embittered as well. Horne had disappeared from her life, and three years later he left England; he emigrated to South Africa and went into the “shipping business,” his nephew said. This did not work, either. Alistair Horne wrote that after World War II “he took to running a country club at Seaford in Sussex.” During the war the FBI had characterized him as a notable pro-Nazi and bankrupt. Now Henry had become a socialist, and supported the Labour Party, having decided that this was the political wave of the future.

  “His clients (mostly soi-disant friends) were a curious blend of socialist bigwigs and stars of stage and screen. Too magnanimous to ask payment of any guest claiming penury … Henry the hotelier didn’t prosper. As he aged, in step with the decor of his club, his fortune declined, and so did the number of his clientele—and his friends.” It was back to bankruptcy court again. “He died, like King Carol of Rumania and Magda Lupescu, marrying on his deathbed a rather ginny Edith.” Henry was out of her life for good. As for Allan, fearing a Nazi invasion, he had sold his assets, including Upper Grosvenor Street, Ropley, and Lees Place, and was living in a tiny two-bedroom row house off Grosvenor Square. Even if he had wanted to help, in wartime England funds were frozen.

  So when the time came for the New York branch to pay out profits to London after war started, Schiaparelli, claiming to be sole owner of the London branch, took $25,000 in cash. She was angling for a second payment when the British authorities heard about it somehow and wanted the income to come to London to help pay for the war effort. All this was happening as Marie Parkinson stopped over in Bermuda en route from Paris to New York in 1941. She was the Frenchborn wife of George R. Parkinson, a British subject who had acted as director of Parfums Schiaparelli in Paris and was about to take over the U.S. operations in New York. The British authorities wanted to talk to her about Schiaparelli.

  Marie Parkinson professed to know very little about the perfume business. However, everyone knew that Schiaparelli was “violently anti-British” and a fifth columnist, someone who used her contacts to stir up anti-British feeling in the French press: for instance, the time when the vitamin shipment was held up temporarily. Schiaparelli was so close to Ambassador Bergery that she was even using his diplomatic mail for her correspondence. Rumor was one thing, but a damning statement from such a reliable source had to be taken seriously.

  Marie Parkinson arrived in New York just three days after Schiaparelli made her own harrowing trip in May 1941. So far she had gone in and out of the U.S. on a visitor’s visa; now she wanted to be admitted as a permanent resident. This entailed much tedious assembling of birth, marriage, and divorce certificates, a physical exam, fingerprinting, and the filling out of endless forms. Her French passport was due to expire in the summer of 1941, which may have been one more reason why it might be prudent to leave. Thanks to her contacts, she obtained a “quota immigrant” visa on March 31, 1941 (expiring in four months), that allowed her to live and work in the U.S. Interestingly, she was not admitted under the French quota, which was presumably full, but under the Italian quota, even though she was naturalized—further evidence of her formidable gifts of persuasion. Or her friends in high places.

  She left Paris on May 11. (Bettina wrote in her diary that Elsa’s departure had been “sudden.”) Her timing turned out to be fortuitous for a number of reasons. Germany attacked Russia in Operation Barbarossa a month later, on June 22, and Gaston Bergery was recalled by Vichy as its ambassador to Russia. He and Bettina had adventures of their own as they travelled west through war zones. It took them twenty-five days to reach Vichy, including a train wreck in Bulgaria. After a spectacular rise, his star was on the decline. His rival Pierre Laval assumed control, and Bergery was “more or less shut out of the political process,” Diane Labrosse wrote. Bergery was shunted off to ride out the war as ambassador to Turkey, stationed in Ankara. He would be increasingly less able, where Elsa was concerned, to do favors and smooth her path. In April, she had her immigrant visa but had not yet assembled all the others: a laissez-passer for Vichy, German permission to leave France, Spanish and Portuguese visas. Then she learned that the chargé d’affaires at the American Embassy, Maynard Barnes, was leaving Paris with members of his staff on a special train en route to New York by way of Vichy. There was a spare seat. Barnes urged her to join them. She had only a few days left.

  Obtaining a Spanish visa was the work of a moment. The Spanish consul “had been a beau of mine,” she said carelessly, and even though she had turned down his offer of marriage they had remained good friends. She had no luck at the Portuguese Consulate. “So it was up to me to decide whether I should take a chance.”

  An American visa was now attached to her passport, and she dared not show this to German authorities at the Vichy border. But since she was travelling with a diplomatic group, Barnes would take charge of it until they were safely in the free zone. One problem solved. Then she went to obtain her Ausweis card for the same crossing point on the pretext that, as director of a perfume hou
se, she wished to visit Grasse to buy some flower essences. This permit was granted on condition that she return in a week’s time. She certainly would, she said, later adding the disingenuous comment that this was “the only time I have lied deliberately.”

  Her couture house would stay open. A designer, Irène Dana, agreed to take charge and managed it until the end of the war. The Parfums Schiaparelli branch closed down, the London branch was defunct, the eighteen-room mansion at the Rue de Berri was left in charge of friends with, she claimed, diplomatic immunity, and Gogo was safely in New York. On her arrival in Vichy from Paris, kind friends greeted her and helped her over the next hurdle: German permission to leave. The only way to do this was with forged papers. “First I was directed to a little village so small that I do not even remember the name. An innocent-looking, elderly man … gave me, without comment … a permit to leave France.” It cost her a thousand francs. Once back in Vichy, she took another train across the Spanish border and over the Pyrenees to a small train station in Canfranc. There she was instructed to get off the train. She was met by a member of the Resistance, who fed and sheltered her until the next train arrived, one assumes a day or two later. “He saw me safely in it—and thus I found myself on the way to Madrid.”

  She had been given a letter by the U.S. Consulate in Vichy addressed to Ben Wyatt, a former American aviation ace and naval attaché now on secret assignment for the American Embassy in Madrid. “As my visa only allowed me three days in Spain I went to see him immediately. If I could not get out of Spain within three days, I would be interned.” Prisoners, she was told, were put in isolation cells, stripped naked, and left there to rot. But when she arrived at Wyatt’s office she was turned away. She left, for once at a loss for words. What she did not also mention was that she was penniless. She was walking down a narrow street in the blinding sun when a man came running after her. It was all a mistake. Commander Wyatt would see her. He took her to lunch and invited the Portuguese ambassador, presumably available at a moment’s notice, to join them. He obtained her Portuguese visa, gave her money, whisked her onto a train, and paid for her airfare on the next Pan American Clipper. It was the work of a single afternoon.