Cover art for Chanel's War
Published
History Press, December 2025
ISBN
9781803999791
Format
Hardcover
Dimensions
23.4cm × 15.6cm

Chanel's War Escape From France

Not yet released
Due December 1, 2025.
Fast $7.95 flat-rate shipping!
Only pay $7.95 per order within Australia, including end-to-end parcel tracking.
100% encrypted and secure
We adhere to industry best practice and never store credit card details.
Talk to real people
Contact us seven days a week – our staff are here to help.

INTERVIEWER: Well, let me make it easier for you. Which side were you on? COCO CHANEL: On neither side, of course. I stood up for myself as I always have done. Nobody has ever told Coco Chanel what to think. A few days after Paris was liberated from the Nazis in August 1944, the most notorious fashion couturiere 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 Resistance 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. AUTHOR: Richard Wallace is a journalist and author. Having worked in Australia for the Fairfax newspaper organisation, he was posted to Europe in 1986 to cover the death of the Duchess of Windsor and the subsequent Geneva auction of her jewellery collection the following year. Leaving Fairfax, Richard joined the Independent shortly after its creation in 1986 at the request of eccentric founding editor, Andreas Whittam Smith. 20 illustrations

Related books