A New Book Explores Coco Chanel’s Life on the French Riviera

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A new book, Chanel’s Riviera: Glamour, Decadence, and Survival in Peace and War, 1930-1944, examines Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel’s life in the sun-kissed period she spent on the Côte D’Azur, beginning just before World War II. Author and journalist Anne de Courcy delves into Chanel’s enterprising ways, her relationships, her lavish life miles away from her Rue Cambon atelier, and eventual return to Paris.

The legendary designer was a fashion pioneer, recognized for her timeless tweed suits and strands of pearls, and her label, now helmed by Virginie Viard, continues to reference the house codes she established. Amidst making fashion history, however, was the period where Chanel’s Riviera opens–the era of her life that she passed hosting friends, lovers, political figures, and others at her villa La Pausa above the French Riviera, where she lived after shutting her atelier at the start of World War II. Even into the 1940s and the bleakness of the war, Chanel sought to maintain her luxurious life and would use her enterprising ways to do so.

Chanel notoriously took a German lover during the war years and has been made out to be a Nazi sympathizer or even a spy. De Courcy, however, argues otherwise, citing an instance where she conferred with her friend and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and suggested that he “hold out a hand in peace” to the Germans.

Following the war, Chanel’s perseverance led her not to return to the Riviera, but instead sell her villa and reopen her fashion house in 1953 in Paris. She was 70 years old at the time. It was shortly after this that she introduced her famous 2.55 quilted bag.

De Courcy believes it must have taken a great amount of courage to return to work, but that Chanel’s perseverance came from confidence. “She wasn’t trying to keep up,” De Courcy said in a recent interview. “She did what she thought was good, and did not care what the others thought.”

Chanel’s Riviera: Glamour, Decadence, and Survival in Peace and War, 1930-1944 is now available online and in bookstores.

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