Chanel | Spring '14 RTW

~

~

We the Pymies of the United Hates, in order to form a more perfect Fashunn, shall overlook, hereby, Coco Chanel's deeds most abhorrent*, in bestowing upon her the Honorary Seal of Pymproval:

---

* In 1923, Vera Bate Lombardi, (born Sarah Gertrude Arkwright), reputedly the illegitimate daughter of the Marquess of Cambridge, afforded Chanel entry into the highest levels of British aristocracy. It was an elite group of associations revolving around such personages as Winston Churchill, aristocrats such as the Duke of Westminster, and royals such as Edward, Prince of Wales. It was in Monte Carlo in 1923, at age forty that Chanel was introduced by Lombardi to the vastly wealthy Duke of Westminster, Hugh Richard Arthur Grosvenor, known to his intimates as "Bendor". The Duke of Westminster lavished Chanel with extravagant jewels, costly art, and a home in London's prestigious Mayfair district. His affair with Chanel lasted ten years.           

The Duke, an outspoken anti-Semite, intensified Chanel's inherent antipathy toward Jews and shared with her an expressed homophobia. In 1946, Chanel was quoted by her friend and confidante, Paul Morand: 

"Homosexuals? … I have seen young women ruined by these awful queers: drugs, divorce, scandal. They will use any means to destroy a competitor and to wreak vengeance on a woman. The queers want to be women—but they are lousy women. They are charming!"

---

No, this isn't awkward at all!