Jeanne Mackin: The Last Collection – A novel of Elsa Schiaparelli and Coco Chanel,  Berkley US/ Penguin Random House, 9780593099339, paperback

 

Summer time, fun reading and Jeanne Mackin’s “The Last Collection - A novel of Elsa Schiaparelli and Coco Chanel” hit the spot, especially since Frankfurt seems to have turned into the tropics for a few weeks. The book is historically well researched, also of the war years in Paris; a fascinating escapist read for the ladies, loved it.

I personally have always been more interested in Elsa Schiaparelli; she was the more positive, inspired and artistic of the two designers with a leaning towards Surrealism which she often applied to her fashion.  Schiap as she called herself was the opposite of Coco Chanel who was cool, arrogant, calculating and somewhat dictatorial leaving her workers often in tears.  She was also known to be leaning towards fascism befriending some high ranking Nazi officials before the occupation of Paris.  Hans Günther von Dincklage, the head of Hitler’s propaganda and press department, was rumoured to have been her lover granting her access to new German clients who were crazy about her perfume and elegant fashion.  Schiap in turn leaned more towards communism and socialism, detested the Nazi’s, housing refugees in her home  and was known to pay more than fair wages to her seamstresses.

The novel is centered on Lily Sutter, a very sympathetic young widow and budding artist. Visiting her brother Charlie in 1938 Paris, she gets entangled between the two rival designers when her brother insists on buying her a first couture dress to cheer her up.  Charlie, a promising medical doctor is in love with Ania, a stunningly beautiful, socially well connected woman who is stuck in an arranged marriage to an influential rich merchant. Charlie is unable to convince Ania to leave her husband as he keeps refusing to agree to a divorce or to give up their daughter.   Ania’s impeccable taste and money gains her unlimited access to both Chanel and Schiaparelli.  Lily gets caught up very quickly in Paris politics and fashion through her friendship to Ania and Schiaparelli who has struck up a friendship with the young woman offering her a job in her store.  Visiting Chanel’s salon on Schiaparelli's order, Lily meets and is strangely attracted to Otto, the attaché and driver to Hans Günther von Dincklage, a high ranking Nazi officer Chanel is trying to charm and gain as her lover eventually succeeding.  The looming threat of a World War II and it’s finally outbreak affects the lives of everyone tragically and brings Chanel and Schiaparelli’s rivalry to a head.

Mackin is an engaging storyteller, she created a very colorful novel  with such sympathetic protagonists as Charlie, Ania, Lily, Otto and the two famous fashion icons, I desperately  wanted to know what happened to them and learned a great deal about the world of Paris fashion in the Thirties as a side benefit.