Passion for Fashion...Eyes For Spies:
The Story of Coco Chanel
Fashionista and Nazi sympathizer Coco
Coco Chanel
DUES NEWS
Forget to pay your dues? Want to join?
It's never too late!
Make out a check for $25 to North Shore
Towers Women's Club and leave it with the
concierge of your building. Put apartment
number on your check and address envelope
to your building representative:
Building 1 3E: Anita Levien
Building 2 9M: Marilyn Goldberg
Building 3 1T: Chickie Kaufman
Coming up on the Club Calendar
PLAY TIME WITH ELINOR ULRICH
Monday February 3; March 2
Friday February 7; March 6
After finishing "Pygmalion" the new play will
be announced
Coleridge Lounge 11 am-12:30 pm
For further information call Elinor Ulrich at
718 225-0102
FEBRUARY FLING
Wednesday, February 12, 5:45pm
Towers On The Green Sit Down Dinner -
Entertainment by the Vic Vincent Trio (50's
music)
$30 per person (subsidized by the
Woman's Club)
Leave checks with concierges:
Building 1 3E: Anita Levien
Building 2 9M: Marilyn Goldberg
Building 3 1T: Chickie Kaufman
(If you have seating requests please put
checks together in one envelope)
JAMES COLL
Wednesday, March 5, 7:15pm, Large
Card Room
Noted lecturer and adjunct professor of
American and Constitutional History
"The Real Alexander Hamilton"
PROFS. HOWARD EHRLICH AND HARVEY
SACKOWITZ
Wednesday, April 23, 7:15pm, Large
Card Room
Professors from St. John’s University
"Behind Closed Doors - The Private Lives of
Presidents and First Ladies"
SPRING LUNCHEON AT THE JOLLY
FISHERMAN
Wednesday, May 13 - Details to be announced
Watch for Lunch Bunch dates. Get together
with other members of the club for camaraderie
and conversation. Posters announcing dates
will be on the door of the coffee shop and in
local newspapers.
Chanel was the topic of the Women's Club
program held on Wednesday, January 15,
in the Lower Card Room. The club hosted wellknown
author and lecturer Rita Plush, whose
expertise spans many fields including fashion,
interior design and decorative arts.
The well-filled room heard the discussion on
Chanel who took women out of crinolines and
put them in trousers. She was also responsible
for the “little black dress,” bell-bottomed trousers,
bobbed hair, and millinery. The empire
that Chanel created and the legacy she left
behind also included the most famous fragrance
of them all - Chanel Number 5. The
Chanel handbag is forever the status symbol
along with the Chanel logo, which is internationally
recognized.
Plush traced Chanel's humble beginnings as
an illegitimate daughter of an itinerant street
vendor and a laundress. Chanel learned how
to sew in the convent she attended as a child;
working her way into society by becoming a
mistress to wealthy men, one of them launched
her fashion career by financing a shop for her.
She built upon that by parlaying into shops
in wealthy resort areas. She also became a
licensed milliner, selling to noteworthy actresses
and women placed high in society.
Plush spoke of Chanel's anti-Semitism,
although Samuel Goldwyn brought her to
Hollywood to dress Gloria Swanson. While
accepting a generous salary from him, her
anti-Semitism was still in evidence.
The engrossed audience heard Plush describe
Chanel's many contributions to the world of
fashion, including designing sportswear for
women, pill box hats, costume jewelry, the
little black dress, spectator shoes, and suntans
in winter. Plush explained that prior to the
emergence of Chanel's influence, a winter
suntan connoted a woman who worked in
the fields. Ever the trendsetter, Chanel was
basking in resort areas, thus legitimizing the
suntanned look.
Touching on her private life, including affairs
with Pablo Picasso and Igor Stravinsky and
being mistress to more than one man at one
time and openly hating gays, Chanel also had
lovers who were officers in the Nazi party. She
was deemed to be a Nazi sympathizer, and
at one time lived at the Ritz Hotel in Paris,
which was headquarters for high-ranking Nazi
officials. She stopped making clothes in 1940
when the Germans arrived in Paris and Chanel
was considered by some to be a German agent.
Some named her "a horizontal collaborator”
because of her prolific sex life with Nazis.
Chanel died in 1971, very much alone in
her later years, and Karl Lagerfeld became the
chief designer of her company. Plush pointed
out that Coco Chanel had a rich history of
ambition on many fronts, including international
involvement and being the single most
influential designer of modern times.
The Vic Vincent Trio
32 NORTH SHORE TOWERS COURIER ¢ February 2020