How Coco Chanel spent her exile in Switzerland

How Coco Chanel spent her exile in Switzerland

Coco Chanel’s grave in the Bois-de-Vaux Cemetery, Lausanne Keystone / Laurent Gillieron

French fashion designer, perfumer and Nazi agent Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel, who died exactly 50 years ago, is buried in Lausanne. After the war she moved to Switzerland to escape criminal charges of collaboration, spending around ten years by Lake Geneva.

This content was published on January 10, 2021 - 12:00

Thomas Stephens Born in London, Thomas was a journalist at The Independent before moving to Bern in 2005. He speaks three official Swiss languages and enjoys travelling the country and practising them, above all in pubs, restaurants and gelaterias. More about the author | English Department

“Coco Chanel drank only champagne,” says a barman at the Beau-Rivage Palace Hotel, where Chanel had a suite. Living in exile could still be done in style, after all.

The luxury Beau-Rivage and the Lausanne Palace, where she also spent time, are both worlds away from the poorhouse hospice where Chanel was born in 1883 and the orphanage where she grew up and learnt to sew.

Through creative vision, hard work and knowing the right (and wrong) people, by 1935 Chanel was employing some 4,000 workers and had five boutiques in central Paris. However, after the war her past – notably working as a German agent codenamed “Westminster” (see box) – caught up with her and in 1945 she found herself with a one-way ticket to French-speaking Switzerland.

Once settled in Lausanne, she stayed and socialised at the top hotels and went for beauty treatments at the Clinique Valmont. She could also be found at the Steffen tearoom in Montreux, a meeting place for celebrities, and the Chalet-des-Enfants restaurant up in the surrounding hills.

Many of these places mention still Chanel in their marketing – the Chalet-des-Enfants website says she would stop there for a “bowl of milk and a slice of flan” and the Lausanne Palace even has a Coco Chanel Suite “largely inspired” by the designer. (At around CHF3,000 ($3,400) a night in summer this is a bargain compared with the CHF24,000 a night for the Coco Chanel Suite at the Ritz Paris – and the rate can go higher than that.)

She apparently rarely left her room at the Beau-Rivage, staying on her balcony and enjoying the view of the lake and mountains. One of her dogs is even said to be buried in a pet cemetery reserved for four-legged hotel guests.

However, when she did venture out for a lakeside promenade, the fact that her chauffeur was following her in a Cadillac suggests she wasn’t bothered about keeping a low profile.

Chanel in the 1950s The Granger Collection

But it wasn’t all parties and promenades. It appears Chanel also spent part of her time in exile preparing her grand return once the dust had settled. In 1954, at the age of 71, she returned to Paris and re-opened her couture house, presenting her first come-back collection.

Swiss burial

Not that she forgot Switzerland. In 1966 she bought a house, “Le Signal”, at Sauvabelin, in the wooded hills above Lausanne. The former finishing school, built in the Heimatstil, was where she would invite various celebrity friends, such as French ballet star Serge Lifar, for whom she had designed outfits.

“I have always needed security. In Switzerland one can have this security,” she once said.

Whereas Lifar died in Lausanne and was buried in Paris, Chanel did the opposite. She died on January 10, 1971, at the Ritz Paris, where she had lived for more than 30 years of her life. But she wanted to be buried in Lausanne.

Chanel being laid to rest in January 1971 Keystone / Str

Her grave, which she designed herself, is in the Bois-de-Vaux Cemetery, where her neighbours include Pierre de Coubertin, founder of the International Olympic Committee, and French lexicographer Paul Robert.

The grave is covered in white flowers (cotoneasters), as requested, and is next to a white stone bench. The gravestone features five lions (her lucky number and her astrological sign). What’s more, the stele is not on the tomb but in front of it – another wish. “I don’t want a stone on my head – in case I want to return,” she explained.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, none of this – not one word about her time in Switzerland – is mentioned in the timeline of the official Chanel website, which jumps from 1945 (headline: “GIs love Chanel”) to 1954 (“Welcome back”).

Coco Chanel and the war In 2011 a book by Hal Vaughan, a Paris-based journalist and former US intelligence officer, claimed not only that Coco Chanel was the lover of a German officer, Hans Günther von Dincklage, (which had been well-documented) but that they were spies who went on missions to Madrid and Berlin to recruit Nazi agents. According to the book, Sleeping With The Enemy: Coco Chanel’s Secret War, which was based on recently declassified French and German intelligence, Chanel was more than just a Nazi sympathiser and collaborator – she was a “vicious anti-Semite” and numbered Nazi agent working for the Abwehr, Germany’s military intelligence agency. The book gives her Abwehr agent number as F-7124 and code-name as “Westminster” (she had had an affair with the Duke of Westminster, one of the wealthiest men in the world). In 2014 a documentary on France 3, L’Ombre d’un Doute (The Shadow of a Doubt), confirmed that Chanel had worked directly for German military intelligence. It was the first time a French state broadcaster admitted that Chanel had spied for the occupiers. Saved by Churchill? When war broke out in 1939, Chanel shut her shops in Paris and during the German occupation lived in the Ritz Paris, also the residence of top German military staff. Her affair with von Dincklage facilitated this. It also helped with the release of her nephew (who some sources claim was in fact her son) from a German prisoner-of-war camp. According to Vaughan, in return she agreed to help the Nazis via “her powerful connections in London, neutral Spain and Paris”. After the war, while many women in France were punished for “horizontal collaboration” with German officers, Chanel was interrogated about her relationship with von Dincklage but not charged as a collaborator. “Churchill had me freed,” Chanel told her grand-niece on returning home, according to Vaughan, who interviewed the grand-niece. Some historians think UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill did this – if he did – to prevent Chanel from testifying and revealing the pro-Nazi sympathies of top British officials and royals, such as Edward VIII, whom she had got to know in the 1920s. In 1945 Chanel moved to Lausanne, where von Dincklage joined her for part of the time. In 1951 a photo was taken of the couple in Villars sur Ollon in canton Vaud. Following the publication of Vaughan’s book, the Chanel Group admitted in a statement that Coco Chanel had had a relationship with von Dincklage but it denied she was anti-Semitic. End of insertion

Just in Time For Valentine’s Day, Chanel Launches Two New Ladies’ Watches

To design its latest wrist candy, the house of Chanel turned to its founder’s favorite blossom for inspiration.

The camellia is one of the most recognizable Chanel symbols and something of a personal talisman for Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel herself. Its mythic status within the couture label made it the ideal jumping-off point for a timepiece that beautifully bridges the gap between timekeeper and fine jewelry. The resulting horological looker is the Première Extrait De Camélia that comes in two slick variations.

Both are constructed with a gleaming 18-karat yellow gold case and titanium caseback (shaped into an octagonal silhouette mirroring the faceted cap of the brand’s No. 5 fragrance). But it’s the dial that truly sets the pair apart. The more minimal of the two maintains a dark palette thanks to its black lacquer dial. Its more glamorous twin is set with 116 brilliant-cut diamonds totaling 0.37 carats. Neither has traditional indexes to mark the hours or minutes, but both are accessorized with a coordinating 18-karat gold camellia charm spattered with diamonds.

Internally, both operate with the aid of a precision quartz movement and are water-resistant up to 30 meters. Each one is secured via a durable rubber strap with a velvet finish for the maximum softness of touch.

There’s no universally agreed upon theory as to why camellias became so ensconced in Chanel’s design canon. House historians believe it could be due to the titular role they played in Sarah Bernhardt’s lead performance of The Lady of the Camellias, a play Chanel reportedly saw as a 13-year-old. It didn’t take long for the designer to begin incorporating them into everything from her clothing to her packaging once she founded her business, and they’ve remained integral to the Chanel identity ever since.

Each version of Chanel’s Première Extrait De Camélia is limited to 1,000 pieces with the black lacquer version available for $7,100 and the diamond-encrusted version for $14,200.

From the Scottish Highlands to the French Riviera, the places most loved by fashion legend Coco Chanel

From the Scottish Highlands to the French Riviera, the places most loved by fashion legend Coco Chanel

From her Scottish tweed jackets and Breton striped tops, to the austere colour palette inspired by her childhood spent in a remote convent, Coco Chanel was shaped by the places she visited.

By Caroline Young Sunday, 24th January 2021, 7:00 am

La Pausa, Chanel’s French Riviera villa in Roquebrune Cap-Martin, where she spent her summers from 1929 to 1953.

It’s 50 years since her death at the age of 87, on 10 January 1971, at the Ritz Hotel in Paris, but her simple, elegant style continues to make an impact. I followed in the footsteps of the pioneering, and at-times controversial, designer to some of the key locations that sparked her creative mind.

When I was researching my book Living with Coco Chanel, which explores the homes and landscapes that shaped the Coco Chanel look, I travelled to the influential places in Chanel’s life. Paris may have captured her modernism and bohemian spirit, but Chanel was also influenced by her time in the remote Auvergne region of France, her home on the French Riviera and in the Scottish Highlands with the Duke of Westminster.

Sign up to our daily newsletter The i newsletter cut through the noise Sign up Thanks for signing up! Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting…

Born in the Loire valley town of Saumur on 19 August 1883, Gabrielle Chanel kept many facts about her childhood secret, but the most significant location in Chanel’s life, the one that holds the key to the codes in her designs, is the convent of Aubazine Abbey. The village, which was built around the abbey, is in an incredibly remote, peaceful location, where the mist rolls in over the hills in the morning, and where the abbey’s bell tower is the prominent landmark.

It was here, in 1895, that 12 year-old Gabrielle Chanel and her two sisters were abandoned by their peddler father after their mother died of tuberculosis in the nearby town of Brive-la-Gaillarde. She only offered hints about the poverty and the abandonment she had suffered, of the cloisters and pine and chestnut trees of the Auvergne landscape that formed a backdrop to her early life.

Many of her signature pieces, such as the little black dress, the double C logo and the black, white and beige colour scheme all stem from her time in the convent. The nuns walked the white corridors in their black and white habits, pristine white sheets and petticoats were hung out to dry in the courtyard, and beige was the colour of the sandstone walls. There is also a medieval mosaic on the floor of the convent’s corridor which depicts moons, stars and Maltese crosses; symbols later used in Chanel’s jewellery collections. The windows in the abbey, with their colourless glass set into leaded geometric patterns like Celtic knots, may also have been the inspiration for the double C Chanel logo.

When Chanel turned 18, she left Aubazine to work as a seamstress in the military town of Moulins. The shop she worked in, House of Grampayre, on cobbled rue de l’Horloge, close to the Jacquemart clocktower, is now a phone shop, but if you look closely you can still see the ghost sign on the wall. An officer from the barracks, wealthy socialite Étienne Balsan, came into the shop for alterations to uniforms, and encouraged Chanel to sing at the town’s café-concert venues including The Grand Cafe, with its plush Art Nouveau interiors still perfectly preserved. Her repertoire each evening included ‘Qui qu’a vu’ Coco’ and ‘Ko Ko Ri Ko’, which earned her the nickname Coco.

Balsan invited Chanel to his estate, Royallieu, in the forest of Compiègne, northeast of Paris, where he immersed himself in his passion for horseracing. On arrival, Coco discovered that Étienne’s primary mistress was Émilienne d’Alençon, a renowned Parisian courtesan. Impressed by Chanel’s unique tomboy style of little boater hats and tweed jackets worn with shirt and tie, Émilienne chose to sport one of Chanel’s hats to the races. The simplicity of the hat, so different from the over-the-top Belle Époque fashions, immediately created a buzz. It was also at Royallieu that Coco met English playboy Arthur ‘Boy’ Capel, who was her first love. When he was killed in a car crash in 1919, Chanel never fully recovered.

Chanel enjoyed the beauty of Loch Stack while staying at the Duke of Westminster’s Stack Lodge.

In 1910, with the support of Boy Capel, Chanel opened a hat shop on Rue Cambon, a narrow little street directly behind the Ritz hotel on Place Vendôme, and it was from here that her fashion empire was born. Bohemian Paris of the 1920s was the place that came to define Coco Chanel, as she immersed herself in the avant-garde circles of Pablo Picasso, Igor Stravinsky, Jean Cocteau and Serge Diaghilev, founder of the Ballet Russes. She was the fashion vanguard of the time, with her short hair, her simple dresses that didn’t require a corset, and the ropes of artificial pearls contrasting with the Little Black Dress.

The Scottish influence

Chanel took up with the immensely wealthy Duke of Westminster after meeting him in Monte Carlo at Christmas 1923, and he introduced her to his 100,000-acre Reay Forest estate in the rugged northwest of Scotland. They stayed at Lochmore Lodge, a 52-room granite mansion with Victorian Gothic turrets, and Stack Lodge, the Duke’s sport’s house on the River Laxford, which was a base for salmon fishing, a sport which Chanel threw herself into with enthusiasm.

Westminster purchased another property, Rosehall, near Lairg, and he gave it to Chanel to decorate. He sold the house in 1930, and it later fell into severe disrepair, yet Chanel’s touches are evident in the beige painted doors and timber mantelpieces, and the French floral block print wallpaper peeling off the wall. In the bathroom there is even a bidet; likely one of the first in the Highlands.

Rosehall House on the Rosehall Estate near Lairg. Bought by her lover the Duke of Westminster in 1926 and decorated by Chanel, it was their sanctuary in the late 1920s.

Chanel’s luxury sports clothes in the late-twenties reflected her time with Westminster and the tweed jackets she borrowed from him to go fishing. Vogue, in 1926, reported that ‘tweed is an essential of the smart new wardrobe’, and it would remain a signature textile for Chanel, particularly with her little tweed boucle jackets that epitomised Parisian chic.

The French Riviera

Paris may have been Coco Chanel’s creative home, but her sanctuary in the south of France, La Pausa, was the place she found complete peace. Situated high above the rocky coastline of Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, between Monte Carlo and the Italian border, Chanel custom-built her villa in 1929 using inspiration from the cloisters of Aubazine Abbey. With her bronzed skin and her striped jersey tops, Chanel helped the French Riviera to become the chic playground of the rich and famous from the 1920s onwards. The villa is still situated in this prime location, and while you can walk up to its gates, and follow a path to the back of the house to view it, it’s not possible to see inside.

Rue Cambon in Paris is the spiritual home of Chanel, where the apartment and salon, with its mirrored staircase, are still perfectly preserved. Yet she chose to permanently live at the Hotel Ritz from the 1930s until her death in 1971. As she gazed out of the windows of the hotel onto Place Vendôme, its octagonal shape may well have inspired her design for the classic number 5 bottle.

French pink and beige floral block print wallpaper in the bedrooms at Rosehall where Chanel used a pastel colour scheme throughout the house. It was in Scotland that she developed her tweed designs, using lighter shades and fabrics than the traditional masculine designs, after borrowing the Duke of Westminster’s coats and jackets.

Caroline Young is a writer from Edinburgh, and the author of Living with Coco Chanel, which explores how the places in Chanel’s life shaped her designs. Her new book, What Coco Chanel Can Teach You About Fashion, by Frances Lincoln, will be released on 3rd August.

A message from the Editor:

Thank you for reading this article. We’re more reliant on your support than ever as the shift in consumer habits brought about by coronavirus impacts our advertisers.

If you haven’t already, please consider supporting our trusted, fact-checked journalism by taking out a digital subscription.

Chanel spent time at the convent in the town of Aubazine, a place chosen by the abbey’s Cistercian founders for its isolation.

For the interiors at Rosehall House, Chanel chose a beige colour scheme, which lingered on in the timberwork of doors and fireplaces after the house became derelict from 1967.

Living with Coco Chanel, Caroline Young’s book on the homes and landscapes that shaped the designer.