A riveting and prismatic novel of the eternally enigmatic Coco Chanel in the aftermath of World War II.Her name is still synonysmous with elegance and chic, it is hard to fathom that the iconic Coco Chanel was arrested and interrogated. But that is exactly what happened in late August, 1944. Though much is lost ot history, or Chanel's own obstrufication, this much is true: one morning two soldiers from the French Forces of the Interior—the loose band of Resistance fighters, soldiers and private citizens who took up arms in the wake of the Liberation of Paris—led Chanel from her suite at the Ritz Hotel in Paris to an undisclosed location for questioning. What transpired during her interrogation, who was present, and why she was set free when so many other women who'd been involved with German men (willingly or otherwise) had their heads shaved or were imprisoned, remains a mystery. In this brilliantIy insightful and compulsively...

A sweeping biography of one of the most influential and controversial legends of New York fashion—the iconic designer whose creations captured the modern feminist spiritIn 1969, when women's liberation and equal rights were on everyone's lips, twenty-two-year-old Diane von Furstenberg set out to have a career of her own. The daughter of a Holocaust survivor, Diane grew up a frizzy-haired, gap-toothed outsider in Brussels. Improbably, she became the wife of Austrian nobleman Egon von Furstenberg, moved to New York City, and quickly made herself a fixture of an outrageous fashion scene. Pregnant and lugging a suitcase of samples to department stores, Diane started a dress business with three styles—and in 1973, stormed onto the national stage with the invention of the wrap dress.Embraced for its flattering style by millions of American women of all ages, sizes, and shapes, the dress became a cult object, tied inexorably to the image Diane projected of...