Let me amend my post. If you look up the definition of prostitute, and research Chanel's life and how she got her money, she was exactly that. She worked on her back for many years with a succession of men, married and not, sometimes several at the same time, to obtain financial support and bankroll her insatiable desire for money and fame. When one didn't have enough, or dumped her, as happened frequently, she went on to the next. While it is true that you can find other designers that have checkered pasts, I know of no other that not only supported herself, but bankrolled her entire company by working on her back as s consort and very highly paid consort. She was not considered acceptable by anyone really in decent society. While her designs later in her life brought her money and some fame, she was so reviled and hated in France after the war for her political leanings and living at a hotel with a high ranking Nazi officer that she voluntarily self-exiled herself to Swtzerland for 15 years. She knew she was hated.
She never gained real respectability in France during her lifetime. When she made her comeback, it was the US that largely embraced her fashion and designs, not France. Likely because they were less aware of both her moral and political history. Or they just didn't care.
Again, while there were other designers that may have checkered pasts, I am consistently amazed that the house of Chanel has managed to totally sweep who she really was under the rug, and make her appear as a glamorous icon. If you watch any of her later interviews with her personally, her lack of character, arrogance and lack of underlying class show through so clearly. I frankly have never run across anyone that looked as bad, nor was conversely that arrogant. She may have been pretty when young, but years of smoking, hard living, and morally-repugnant behavior caught up with her. She was anything but classy and glamorous in later adulthood. While she had a lot of money and no longer needed to work as a prostitute to bankroll her company, she looked 20 years older than she was. Her employees didnt like her and were treated poorly enough that at least one time they held a strike. She retaliated not long after by closing her shop and putting them all out of work, despite pleas even by the government not to. She was really a despicable person. It showed in her lack of close friends, the fact that the few people she wanted to marry didn't find her acceptable in polite society, and she never was able to marry. She had one longer relationship, but he married someone that was acceptable. She continued to bed him despite the marriage. Purportedly, he was planning on leaving his wife for her when he was killed in a car wreck. Some people have painted this as a star-crossed romance and tragic death. While it was a tragic death, she had no compunctions at all about breaking up his marriage, taking huge sums of money from him before and after marriage, or the same things from sommany others. She lived repeatedly as the cincubine and mistress of so many different men that polite society considered her kind of a joke. Yes, they might buy a gown, but no way would they invite her to dinner. I imagine having her anywhere near your husband would have been a scary proposition as she was seemingly without conscience.
She was anything but decent on any level, nice or classy on the true level of what true class means. Having one of her bags is just not something that would make me feel good or proud. I would always be aware of her history. While other designers may have skeletons, I know of no others that were so entirely lacking in class and decency. (Sorry for any typos, typing on that darn little iPhone keyboard - LOL!).
