Sleeping with the Enemy is one of the most controversial books on Coco Chanel, which details her life during the Second World War era.

This book follows Coco Chanel from her early life in an orphanage to her time as a cabaret singer, hat maker and eventually an international fashion designer! if you are interested in trying to demystify the woman behind the myth, this is a wonderful place to start.Engaging biography of Coco Chanel which brings more facts into the often glamorised picture as it explores a life from an early start onwards to the creation of her iconic trademark and to the perception of modern day. I was extremely surprised by her life and I loved the depiction that Rose gave of this incredible if not somewhat scary woman who powered through a time where women were not equal and had to fight doubly hard to their male counterparts for recognition. Meet three inspirational Earth Heroes whose love of the natural world inspires them to make a difference: Jane Goodall, Greta Thunberg, and David Attenborough!

For more details, please consult the latest information provided by Royal Mail's International Incident Bulletin. She was a determined lady with strong beliefs and a fabulous artistic ability, I loved that as well as changing the fashion world as it was known at the time, she was also sponsoring artists to help them bloom and develop. I think that was the focus of my dislike of the book: very little on the woman herself, with far too much about friends, family, business associates, and acquaintances. even in an age of massive oversharing of information, some things are best left a secret, a mistery. This is a fascinating and unvarnished look at Coco Chanel (including before she was "Coco") and I learned so many things I did not know.The book is such a fascinating read and very inspirational and I absolutely adore the accompanying images. The Queen of Paris, the new novel from award-winning author Pamela Binnings Ewen, vividly imagines the hidden life of Chanel during the four years of Nazi occupation in Paris in the midst of WWII—as discovered in recently unearthed wartime files.

I would recommend the book but it does jump around a bit and some things that Coco said and stories she told about herself are hard to trace so we don't actually know if they are all true. The biography also features chapters on the Chanel Maison and the creation of her iconic trademark as well as her ‘little black dress’ and ‘Chanel No 5’. From being abandoned by her father to building her empire, and then an apparent nazi spy, this woman was many layered. Coco Chanel is a name and iconic brand that everyone knows about however apart from her name, suits and perfume I knew very little about the woman and her life behind the name.Chanel was an iconoclastic entrepreneur, who rebelled against and manipulated gender expectations of her time. At night, their secret stash of romantic novels and magazine cutouts beneath the floorboards are all they have to keep their dreams of the future alive. The book provides a useful insight into her early years, quotes her words from interviews with her, while exploring her life story based on several sources. It begins with a long-winded description of Chanel's rooms instead of with the topic of the biography, Chanel herself--involved descriptions of inanimate objects can never replace the human character or historical figure. While Chanel was supreme innovator and vendor of all things elegant and beautiful, what lies beneath her own glossy myth is far darker.

Hal Vaughan exposes the truth of her wartime collaboration and her long affair with the playboy Baron Hans Günther von Dincklage—who ran a spy ring and reported directly to Goebbels. This author does EVERYTHING she can to soften, blur, and confuse Chanel's antisemitism, homophobia, drug use, all round bitchy-ness, and especially the facts about her Perfume and spying.An exploration of Coco's early life and a celebration of her creativity, Along Came Coco shows the ways in which Coco Chanel's imaginative spirit led her to grow into one of the world's most beloved fashion icons. However, as newly declassified information reveals, she did not supply any information in exchange for this favour. I liked the incursion into the actual biography of Gabrielle Chanel, including the way the author tries to trace her steps through the web of fake data the woman liked to provide about herself.