Was Coco Chanel a Nazi spy? Legendary fashion designer was codenamed 'Westminster', claims TikToker
Legendary French designer Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel was allegedly a Nazi spy with a “code name and everything", a TikToker recently claimed in her video. The video has been viewed more than 78,000 times so far.
TikTok user @ts_semiautobiographical, who has more than 27,000 followers, went viral after she responded to a challenge by user @just..phil. The challenge was for people to share the names of historical figures with controversial legacies. “Who was an awful person alive but history seems to glorify them?” @just..phil said in the video, posted on January 23. “You know, somebody like Christopher Columbus?”
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User @ts_semiautobiographical, who goes by 'Ms. Jones', responded on Tuesday, February 9, with a video about Coco Chanel. “She was an actual Nazi, like a hired hand of the Nazi Party, yet she’s still evangelized and admired,” the TikToker said adding that Coco Chanel’s alleged codename was “Westminster.” She also weighed in on the extent of Coco Chanel’s involvement with the Nazi Party saying that the designer was either “simply useful” in providing intel on the Jewish elite, or she was a “wicked combination of opportunistic and anti-Semitic.”
The TikToker added that if it was the former, Coco Chanel was likely using her access to the Jewish elite to “help grow her empire.” If it was the latter, Coco Chanel “actually manipulated the Nazi Party in order to build her empire and empower her anti-semitism. But that reputation doesn’t precede her,” Ms Jones concluded.
Ms Jones wasn’t the first person to accuse Coco Chanel of being connected to the Nazis. According to a 2017 Snopes fact check, Coco Chanel was in a relationship with one Baron Hans Gunther von Dincklage, who was a “special attaché” of the German government sent to Paris in 1933. At one point, they even lived together. The myth-busting outlet also uploaded photos of declassified government documents from the French Defense Ministry’s archives in which a reference to “Madame COCO CHANEL" could be found. According to Snopes’ translation of the French document, Coco Chanel was von Dincklage’s “mistress and agent” from 1942 to 1943.
There is also a profile of the designer on Biography.com, according to which Coco Chanel wanted to remain in the good books of a German military officer due to her personal benefits. She reportedly wanted to ensure the release of her nephew who was imprisoned by the Germans since 1940. The profile says that she got the nickname "Westminster," due to her past relationship with the Duke of Westminster.
She also reportedly harbored resentment toward a Jewish family, referred to only as the Wertheimers, who allegedly promoted the launch of her perfume line but pocketed most of her profits. She might have used this to her advantage when Jews were forced to give up their businesses. In a Forbes profile in August about her, it was said that while her brand historically distanced itself from its Nazi ties, a need for more transparency remains, especially amid the global scale of the Black Lives Matter movement last year, which prompted many businesses and brands to revisit their problematic pasts and practices.