Easy Design

Chanel and Anti-semitism?

I am a 22 year old woman who really enjoys the finer, fancy things in life. Pretty purses, feminine clothes, cute shoes, nice perfume, etc.
Ever since I was a little girl I have admired Chanel designs. The elegant black, the designs, the powerful femininity of it all. I was so excited to see the Chanel movie when it came out.
However, I saw in an online article recently that Chanel was a serious anti-semite and she collaborated with Nazis during WW2 and all that information was left out of the movie. This breaks my heart to know this because I am jewish. But I can’t help but still love Chanel designs. I have alot of chanel things, I even received a chanel purse and perfume set for the holidays and now I feel really guilty about wearing it or using my purse. My friends think I’m just being silly for feeling bad…am I?

UPDATED ANSWER:
Yes, Coco Chanel was a Nazi collaborator and was an anti-semite–BUT READ ON FOR INFORMATION TO MAKE YOUR DECISION. (Here’s a link that you may be interested in about Chanel’s past:

http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/47100,people,news,chanelrsquos-nazi-past-left-out-of-new-audrey-tautou-film)

There’s a fascinating story about Chanel that would make an interesting movie all by itself that you should be aware of.

Chanel was originally partners with Pierre Wertheimer, a French Jew. (The split was 70% to Wertheimer, 20% to Theophile Bader, and 10% to Coco Chanel. Bader, also a French Jew, was a friend of Coco’s and he owned an important department store in Paris.)

Wertheimer developed the upscale perfume business segment that was to feature Chanel No. 5 as the flagship product in the early 1920s. Incidentally, Earnest Beaux created the fragrance for Coco and she named it after her lucky number 5. (As far as we know, Earnest Beaux did not become exceptionally wealthy as a result of his invention, although it seems likely that he would have continued to work with the business, given his exceptional talents.)

Coco Chanel became resentful of the Wertheimers largely because of their signed agreement that gave the Wertheimers a much larger percentage of ownership and profits than Chanel’s. This resentment grew to anger as the company became more successful.

But the fact remains that the Wertheimers were the financial backers of Chanel. They took the risks and invested in the business. Chanel had certainly accumulated enough wealth that she could have started a separate business, but did not want to take the financial risks that the Wertheimers did. She tried to legally renegotiate her agreement with the Wertheimers, but this effort failed.

When the Nazis came to power, the Wertheimers fled Germany in the 1940s. Coco Chanel’s greed made it easy to become friendly with the Nazis, and she embraced the Nazis in an attempt to take control of the Chanel business after the Wertheimers moved to the United States. But the Wertheimers thwarted her attempts at control, as they managed to install an “Aryan” business partner to run Chanel and look after their interests.

After the World War, Coco Chanel continued her assault on her former admirer, Pierre Wertheimer, and began manufacturing her own line of perfumes. Feeling that Coco Chanel was infringing on Parfums Chanel’s business, Pierre Wertheimer wanted to protect his legal rights, but wished to avoid a court battle, and so, in 1947, he settled the dispute with Coco Chanel, giving her $400,000 (maybe about $5 million in today’s dollars) and agreeing to pay her a 2 percent royalty on all Chanel products. (2 Points was a good deal.) He also gave her limited rights to sell her own perfumes from Switzerland.

Coco Chanel never made any more perfume after the agreement. She gave up the rights to her name in exchange for a monthly stipend from the Wertheimers. The settlement paid all of her monthly bills and kept Coco Chanel and her former lover, von Dincklage, living in relatively high style. It appeared as though aging Coco Chanel would drop out of the Chanel company saga.

At 70 years of age in 1954, Coco Chanel returned to Paris with the intent of restarting her fashion studio. She went to Pierre Wertheimer for advice and money, and he agreed to finance her plan. In return for his help, Wertheimer secured the rights to the Chanel name for all products that bore it, not just perfumes. Once more, Wertheimer’s decision paid off from a business standpoint. Coco Chanel’s fashion lines succeeded in their own right and had the net effect of boosting the perfume’s image. In the late 1950s Wertheimer bought back the 20 percent of the company owned by Bader. Thus, when Coco Chanel died in 1971 at the age of 87, the Wertheimers owned the entire Parfums Chanel operation, including all rights to the Chanel name.

And now you know much more of this interesting story.

http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/Chanel-SA-Company-History.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chanel

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerard_Wertheimer

http://www.forbes.com/lists/2006/10/ALDV.html

http://www.forbes.com/lists/2006/10/ALDV.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerard_Wertheimer

Denis Boudard Lacoste Parfums