Coco Chanel did have an affair with von Dincklage and spent most of the war years holed up with the head of Nazi propaganda and other German officials at the Ritz. Even if she wasn’t a spy actively working for the Germans (and there are those who say she was), she was a collaborator or, as they described such women, a “horizontal collaborator.” She was far from alone in that category; as soon as the Germans marched out of Paris, thousands of Frenchmen and -women were charged with, or at least accused of, collaborating. There’s a good chance that if Winston Churchill hadn’t sent a well-timed letter, Coco might have ended up in prison. But he did, and she didn’t, and after the war her reputation grew, rather than diminished.
Coco’s war years are described in Hal Vaughan’s book Sleeping with the Enemy: Coco Chanel’s Secret War, and there are several excellent biographies about her, including Lisa Chaney’s Coco Chanel: An Intimate Life, Rhonda Garelick’s Mademoiselle: Coco Chanel and the Pulse of History, and Justine Picardie’s Coco Chanel: The Legend and the Life. I particularly recommend Paul Morand’s The Allure of Chanel (with illustrations by Karl Lagerfeld), based on his conversations with Coco. It’s Coco’s life, as told by Coco, and while it may not be completely accurate, it’s fascinating reading.
There are, sadly, few biographies of Elsa Schiaparelli, but Meryle Secrest’s fabulous Elsa Schiaparelli is about as complete as a biography can be, and Palmer White, who was a friend of Elsa’s daughter, Gogo, has also written a great, and wonderfully illustrated, biography of Schiaparelli. Elsa’s granddaughter Marisa Schiaparelli Berenson published the wonderfully intimate Elsa Schiaparelli’s Private Album, and Elsa also wrote her own autobiography, Shocking Life.
The series Vogue on has published Vogue on Coco Chanel and Vogue on Elsa Schiaparelli, two little volumes that trace both the lives and the artistry of the women.
The Museum of Art in Philadelphia contains several Schiaparelli costumes and put up a show called Shocking!: The Art and Fashion of Elsa Schiaparelli some years ago. An important book about the exhibit, by the same name and authored by Dilys E. Blum, is still available. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York also includes some Schiaparelli designs and put up their own exhibit and book, Schiaparelli & Prada, comparing the two designers and the conversations and parallels in their work.
Other invaluable texts for this story include My Grandfather’s Gallery: A Family Memoir of Art and War, by Anne Sinclair, granddaughter of Paul Rosenberg; Samuel Marx’s Queen of the Ritz about Blanche Auzello, who ran the great hotel with her husband during the thirties; The Hotel on Place Vendôme, by Tilar J. Mazzeo; Over Here!: New York City During World War II, by Lorraine B. Diehl; Charlie Scheips’s Elsie de Wolfe’s Paris: Frivolity Before the Storm; and Fireworks at Dusk: Paris in the Thirties, by Olivier Bernier.
I also recommend, for pleasure as well as research, Théâtre de la Mode: Fashion Dolls: The Survival of Haute Couture, based on a 1945 traveling exhibit of couture-dressed dolls organized by the Chambre Syndicale de la Couture to jump-start the fashion industry at the end of the war.
I’m sure I’ve left someone or something out; if so, please accept my apologies. Keeping order and track of five years of reading and research can be like trying to find all the pins on the floor.
* * *
• • •
Both Coco and Schiap survived the war, but the world changed, grew more serious and less playful. Schiap’s couture house went into decline and then bankruptcy. And while Schiap had a pleasant and relaxing time in that hammock in Tunisia, I’m sure she missed the hustle of collection week, the thrill of a new design, a new concept appearing in her imagination. She died in her sleep, in 1973, at age eighty-three. She died not knowing, thankfully, that one of her beloved grandchildren, Gogo’s daughter Berry, would die in one of the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center on 9/11.
Coco died in Paris, in 1971, at the grand age of eighty-seven.
I doubt Schiap ever forgot that fashion and politics are inextricably linked. What we wear gives messages about our beliefs, our hopes, our fears, from the everyday blue jeans of rebellious adolescence to the power suits women felt necessary in the 1970s. And when our clothing choices are made for us by others, part of our identity is threatened, some of our freedom removed.
At the end of Shocking Life Elsa Schiaparelli lists twelve commandments for women, and number five is my favorite: “Ninety percent [of women] are afraid of being conspicuous and of what people will say. So they buy a grey suit. They should dare to be different.” Her last commandment was to the point: “And she should pay her bills.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many thanks to the people at Berkley who supported The Last Collection and guided it from early draft to finished novel and beyond: my great editor, Danielle Perez, who encouraged me to leaps and risks that strengthened the story, Jenn Snyder, Sarah Blumenstock, Michelle Kasper, Jin Yu, Jessica Mangicaro, Lauren Burnstein, Diana Franco, Rita Frangie, Claire Zion, Craig Burke, Jeanne-Marie Hudson, Christine Ball, and Ivan Held. Special thanks to Ellen Edwards, who began this journey with me; my agent, Kevan Lyon; and fellow writer Nancy Holzner, for her support and insights.
Readers Guide
The Last Collection
Jeanne Mackin
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. At the heart of this novel is this question: how do we continue to live fulfilling private lives in a society that is doing its best to divide us, politically and culturally? Pre–World War II Paris was full of dichotomies, the most obvious being the choice between communism and fascism. What other divisions do you see in this story? Do you see parallels to today?
2. When Lily fell in love with Otto, she realized that she was, in fact, falling in love with a man who would be fighting against her own country, perhaps even her own brother. How did she make her peace with this terrible choice?
3. Coco Chanel and Elsa Schiaparelli disagreed on what patriotism required of them during the German occupation of Paris. Chanel decided to close her couture salon and lay off her workers rather than sell her clothes to the occupying Germans. Schiap chose to keep her salon and to continue to pay as many of her workers as possible, even though it meant welcoming German officers into the shop. Which decision would you have made and why?
4. The narrator, Lily, had strong emotional reactions to different colors. Lilies are often associated with the color white, which is the sum of all color wavelengths, not, as some people think, the absence of all color. (If you shine the primary colors of red, blue, and yellow on a white paper, you’ll see white where the colors overlap.) What influence did the love of color have on Lily?
5. What are your emotional responses to color? Do you have a favorite color that always lightens your mood? Is there a color you try to avoid? What events in your life might have helped form those preferences?
6. There were many differences between Chanel and Schiaparelli, some reinforced by their rivalry and animosity toward each other. Chanel, for instance, insisted that as a couturier she was a craftswoman, while Schiap insisted that couturiers were artists. Do you think couture fashion is art? Have you visited a museum where clothing was being exhibited, and what did you think of the exhibit?
7. Schiap’s daughter, Gogo, came down with polio just when Schiap, abandoned by her husband, had to learn how to work and support herself and her daughter. She had to work long hours and spent days, even weeks, away from her child when Gogo needed her the most. How do you think this affected their relationship?
8. Why do you think Chanel invented a story about being educated in a convent rather than admitting to having been raised in an orphanage after her mother died and her father abandoned the family?
9. If you could wear clothing from any time or any place, what would you choose?
10. When Lily was in a period of great grief, she stopped caring about her appearance. What do you think is the relationship between cl
othes and our emotions?
11. The novel is structured in three sections, one for each primary color. How does the action in each section reflect Lily’s emotional response to that particular color?
12. There are several love stories in this novel. Which one affected you the most? Why?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jeanne Mackin is the author of several historical novels, including The Beautiful American. She taught creative writing at Goddard College and has given numerous workshops. She lives with her husband in upstate New York.
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