Crimes of fashion?

A new documentary reveals how Coco Chanel was recruited by Nazi spies

- HANNAH DAVIES, IAN MACEWAN, SEAN MARLAND, RICHARD MCCLURE, ELAINE REILLY HANNEL ETTY

NEW PROFILE
Coco Chanel Unbuttoned
Friday, 9pm (times vary), BBC2

The fashion brand Chanel has always been synonymous with luxury and elegance. Yet its founder Gabrielle ‘Coco’ Chanel was once recruited by Nazi spies to undertake a bizarre undercover plot, according to a fascinating new BBC2 documentary, Coco Chanel Unbuttoned.

The feature-length film gives a detailed account of the fashion designer’s extraordinary rags-to-riches story, from a deeply unhappy childhood growing up in an orphanage to becoming one of the world’s most famous women before her death in 1971, aged 87.

HIGH SOCIETY