Author: Stefan Morawski File Type: pdf

Author: Hal Vaughan File Type: mobi ReviewTenacious digging into secret wartime records reveals a worsening case for the legendary French designer. Well rendered by Vaughan...a sorry story of war-time collaboration, exacerbated by the lack of reckoning during her lifetime. -Kirkus ReviewsSleeping with the Enemy sheds new light on Chanels dealings with the famously tight-lipped Wertheimer family... To this day, the family refuses to discuss Coco Chanel with the media, but Vaughan still manages to paint an engrossing portrait of the dealings between the two. --newyorker.comThis is not a book about style or design. It is a frank and unsentimental portrait of a figure that fashion writers are nearly incapable of criticizing. -- Isabel Schwab, The New Republic[Hal Vaughan] ably demonstrates that Chanel was far from an innocent victim of circumstance during the second world war but a fully fledged Abwehr (German secret service) agent with her own number and codename Westminster (no doubt a nod to her one-time lover, the Duke of Westminster). . . Vaughan, who writes with welcome economy and flair, deserves a lot of credit for finally unraveling the strands of Chanels deeply deceptive personality.Tobias Grey, Financial Times [Sleeping with the Enemy] distinguishes itself from the many other Chanel biographies by tackling the dicey subject of Gabrielle Chanels activities during World War II . . . This is a frank and unsentimental portrait of a figure that fashion writers are nearly incapable of criticizing. . . While Vaughans discussions of Chanels contributions to fashion add nothing new to the extensive literature on her, he more than makes up for it with his impressive research and the never-before-seen information that he has unearthed about her wartime activities. . . . What Sleeping with the Enemy offers is a more rounded look at a figure who has been over-studied and under-examined.Isabel Schwab, The New Republic online [A] compelling chronicle of Coco Chanel . . . a different Chanel from any youll find at the company store . . . by no means the account of an emerging style but a tale of how a single-minded woman faced history, made hard choices, connived, lied, collaborated and used every imaginable wile to survive and see that the people she cared about survived with her . . . Vaughan has gleaned many of the details of Chanels collaboration from documents that were scattered for years throughout European archives . . . Its an astonishing story . . gripping . . . provocative . . . riveting history. Marie Arana, The Washington Post Chanels war years, as explored by Hal Vaughan, are as camera-ready and as neck-deep in melodrama as Quentin Tarantinos Inglourious Basterds, and just as hard to forget now that theyre exposed.David DArcy, San Francisco ChronicleHal Vaughan has done a stupendous job of research . . . Vaughan draws a brilliant portrait . . a terrific and fascinating story. . . wonderfully told, and full of great characters. . . Vaughan brings her to life so vividly that we understand why no less a judge than Andre Malraux said that from this century in France only three names will remain de Gaulle, Picasso, and Chanel.. . . It is that rarest of good reads, a biography about a famous person with a surprise on every page. Nancy Mitford, I think, would have loved it, and written a wonderful letter to Evelyn Waugh about it! Michael Korda, The Daily BeastFrom this century, in France, three names will remain de Gaulle, Picasso, and Chanel. Andre MalrauxCoco Chanel created the look of the modern woman and was the high priestess of couture.She believed in simplicity, and elegance, and freed women from the tyranny of fashion. She inspired women to take off their bone corsets and cut their hair. She used ordinary jersey as couture fabric, elevated the waistline, and created bell-bottom trousers, trench coats, and turtleneck sweaters. In the 1920s, when Chanel employed more than two thousand people in her workrooms, she had amassed a personal fortune of $15 million and went on to create an empire.Jean Cocteau once said of Chanel that she had the head of a little black swan. And, added Colette, the heart of a little black bull. At the start of World War II, Chanel closed down her couture house and went across the street to live at the Hotel Ritz. Picasso, her friend, called her one of the most sensible women in Europe. She remained at the Ritz for the duration of the war, and after, went on to Switzerland. For more than half a century, Chanels life from 1941 to 1954 has been shrouded in vagueness and rumor, mystery and myth. Neither Chanel nor her many biographers have ever told the full story of these years. Now Hal Vaughan, in this explosive narrativepart suspense thriller, part wartime portraitfully pieces together the hidden years of Gabrielle Coco Chanels life, from the Nazi occupation of Paris to the aftermath of World War II. Vaughan reveals the truth of Chanels long-whispered collaboration with Hitlers high-ranking officials in occupied Paris from 1940 to 1944. He writes in detail of her decades-long affair with Baron Hans Gunther von Dincklage, Spatz (sparrow in English), described in most Chanel biographies as being an innocuous, English-speaking tennis player, playboy, and harmless dupea loyal German soldier and diplomat serving his mother country and not a member of the Nazi party. In Vaughans absorbing, meticulously researched book, Dincklage is revealed to have been a Nazi master spy and German military intelligence agent who ran a spy ring in the Mediterranean and in Paris and reported directly to Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, right hand to Hitler.The book pieces together how Coco Chanel became a German intelligence operative how and why she was enlisted in a number of spy missions how she escaped arrest in France after the war, despite her activities being known to the Gaullist intelligence network how she fled to Switzerland for a nine-year exile with her lover Dincklage. And how, despite the French courts opening a case concerning Chanels espionage activities during the war, she was able to return to Paris at age seventy and triumphantly resurrect and reinvent herselfand rebuild what has become the iconic House of Chanel.From the Hardcover edition.

Author: Regina Lee Blaszczyk File Type: pdf The fashion business has been collecting and analyzing information about colors, fabrics, silhouettes, and styles since the 18th century - activities that have long been shrouded in mystery. The Fashion Forecasters is the first book to reveal the hidden history of color and trend forecasting and to explore its relevance to the fashion business of the past two centuries. It sheds light on trend forecasting in the industrial era, the professions maturation during the modernist moment of the 20th century, and its continued importance in todays digital fast-fashion culture. Based on in-depth archival research and oral history interviews, The Fashion Forecasters examines the entrepreneurs, service companies, and consultants that have worked behind the scenes to connect designers and retailers to emerging fashion trends in Europe, North America, and Asia. Here you will read about the trend studios, color experts, and international trade fairs that formalized the prediction process in the modern era, and hear the voices of leading contemporary practitioners at international forecasting companies such as the Doneger Group in New York and WGSN in London. Probing the inner workings of the global fashion system, The Fashion Forecasters blends history, biography, and ethnography into a highly readable cultural narrative.**ReviewThe intuition, sixth-sense, and impeccable taste of fashion forecasters is well worth this books insightful analysis. How they predict who will wear what - and when - is the intriguing story of this comprehensive anthology. -- Mary Westerman Bulgarella, Co-editor of Colors in Fashion, and Costume Colloquium Advisory Committee Coordinator, ItalyUSA For a field that is obsessed with the future, there is much to be learned from the past, as editors Blaszczyk and Wubs provide an engaging overview of the history of forecasting, giving overdue credit to the industrys originators. Meticulously researched with excellent first-person accounts, The Fashion Forecasters untangles the web of current forecasting influences and creates a clear vision for its future. -- Lorynn R. Divita, Baylor University, USA About the AuthorRegina Lee Blaszczyk is Leadership Chair in the History of Business and Society and Professor of Business History at the University of Leeds in the UK. She writes about design and innovation for the creative industries. Her books include Imagining Consumers Design and Innovation from Wedgwood to Corning (2000) Producing Fashion Commerce, Culture, and Consumers (2008) The Color Revolution (2012) Bright Modernity Color, Commerce, and Consumers (with Uwe Spiekermann, 2017) Fashionability Abraham Moon and the Creation of British Cloth for the Global Market(2017) and European Fashion The Creation of a Global Industry (with Veronique Pouillard, 2018). Ben Wubs is Professor of International Business History at the Erasmus School of History, Culture and Communication in Rotterdam and an appointed Project Professor at the Graduate School of Economics at Kyoto University in Japan. In terms of research, he is engaged in projects on multinationals, business systems, transnational economic regions, Dutch-German economic relations, and the global fashion industry. His books include International Business and National War Interests Unilever between Reich and Empire (2008) and (with Ralf Banken) The Rhine A Transnational Economic History (2017).

Author: David Gorman File Type: pdf