She created the look of the modern woman; she was the high priestess of couture; she inspired women to take off their bone corsets and to cut their hair. She believed in simplicity and elegance and freed women from the tyranny of fashion. She used ordinary jersey as couture fabric; elevated the waistline and created bellbottom trousers, trench coats, turtleneck sweaters, and costume jewelry. In the 1920s when she employed more than two thousand people in her work rooms, she had amassed a personal fortune of $15 million and went on to create an empire. She was autocratic; a volatile woman of fierce ambition and drive; confidante of the rich and famous, friend of royalty and nobility. At the start of the Second World War, she closed down her couture house and went across the street to live at the Ritz . Picasso, her friend, called her "the most sensible women in Europe." She remained at the Ritz and moved on to Vichy and then Switzerland between 1945 to1954. For more than half a century, Chanel's life from 1941 to 1954 has been shrouded in vagueness and rumor; mystery and myth... Neither Chanel nor her many biographers have ever told the full story of these years. Now Hal Vaughan, in this explosive expose--part suspense thriller, part wartime portrait--fully pieces together the hidden years of Gabrielle 'Coco' Chanel's life, from the Nazi occupation of Paris to the aftermath of the war. Vaughan tells the story of Chanel's long-whispered collaboration with Hitler's high-ranking officials.