The Queen of Paris

Fashion designer Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel’s perfume slogan was her core belief: A woman without Chanel No. 5 is a woman with no future. Contractually, she owned ten percent of the fragrance company, while perfumer Pierre Wertheimer claimed 90 percent. During World War II, Wertheimer immigrated to the United States, taking the perfume’s formula with him. Chanel engaged in a legal battle to regain the formula, utilizing questionable methods such as invoking the Nuremberg Laws forbidding persons of Jewish heritage to own property over an Aryan, and spying for the Nazis to gain favor. (The suit was ultimately settled in favor of Wertheimer.) In her fictionalized biography, Ewen (The Moon in the Mango Tree) covers a broad span of years, 1904–44, with flashbacks detailing Chanel’s early loves and losses, establishing youthful privation as her source of determination. Yet it’s difficult to sympathize with a character so callous as to spend the war in the Hôtel Ritz living in luxury alongside the Nazi High Command.