Two more notes of interest about the creepy Hugo Boss: His company used forced labor from Nazi prisons factories, which took them from concentration camps. In 2011 the company “issued a formal apology” for its “activities” during the Second World War. Has anyone read about the zillions of dollars the company donated to Holocaust survivors over the years? I have not.
Fortunately, I have never squirted Chanel perfume on myself. Gabrielle Chanel, known to the modern world as Coco was a spy for the Third Reich! A wretched anti-Semitic, homophobic, opportunistic bitch who, like so many power-Nazis, was addicted to morphine—she enthusiastically collaborated with the Germans when they occupied Paris.
Uh, oh. Here’s a painful truth for today’s Louis Vuitton fans: The Vuitton leather goods house had very strong ties to the Vichy regime in Nazi-occupied France. The Vichy regime was a puppet government in France run by the Germans. Henry Vuitton was a regular at a hip Gestapo cafe and was one of the first Frenchmen to be decorated by the Nazi-backed Vichy regime for his family’s loyalty and efforts for the reich.
Although Christian Dior wasn’t a Nazi sympathizer per se, he was employed by Lucien LeLong during the occupation and dressed the wives and mistresses of several big-shot Nazi officers. His sister, Catherine, did her part to erase that ugly blot on the family history by joining the French Resistance. She was arrested in Paris in 1944 by the Gestapo and tortured, then deported to Ravensbruck, a woman’s concentration camp. She survived and lived to 90. Vive Catherine!
