Amorality of fashion has reached its height in the recent Met meltdown around John Galliano’s antisemitic antics and cancelled show.
Galliano was originally offered a major accolade in an apparent attempt to elevate his status and make him unassailable in the art world, despite his many antisemitic remarks about Jews, whose gassing in the Holocaust he was all too happy to celebrate in a pub. It was a long time ago and he has since apologised, but Galliano’s venality became what can only be described as a vulgar cover-up.
Cover-ups are part of the stock-in-trade of the fashion industry, and no one was more determined to hide her impoverished beginnings than Coco Chanel. Her rise from street urchin to trendsetter fashion designer in the 1920s took a turn during the Vichy regime when she closed her operations and developed a close relationship with the Nazis, living in the Ritz Hotel with a German intelligence officer throughout the war. Her love affair with Hans Gunther von Dicklage, known as Spatz, and her involvement in Nazi spy operations took her, at one point, to Madrid to negotiate an end to the war on behalf of Hitler.
On a more personal level, Chanel was also actively anti-Jewish and she shamelessly tried to use Aryan laws to prevent Jews, some of whom were her business partners, from taking control of her perfume company. In the 1950s, when Chanel returned to the fashion circuit, she was entirely without remorse about her Nazi connections and beliefs. She never apologised for her behaviour during the Nazi occupation of Paris. Her biographers suggest that she was ruled by opportunism and a love of power more than any sense of patriotism.
In contrast, Christian Dior, who was a fiercely patriotic Frenchman, continued to work for the Nazis in order to survive, designing for their wives. However, he used his money to support the French Resistance, in which his younger sister, Catherine, was deeply involved. The story of her capture by the Gestapo, torture, imprisonment, and forced labour almost ended in a death march in April 1945, from which she escaped and returned to Paris. Catherine became the muse of her designer brother, who paid tribute to her by creating ‘Miss Dior’ perfume, released in 1947. She was also recognised for her bravery and awarded the Croix de Guerre and the Chevalier of the Legion of Honour.
In the fashion world where a ‘brand’ can turn sweatpants into a designer item, it pays to think about the backstory to the name. Hugo Boss, the founder of the iconic German brand which became a global fashion house, joined the Nazi Party in 1931 as a true believer in National Socialism. According to his biographer Roman Koester, it was not opportunism which prompted his sponsoring of the paramilitary SS by paying a monthly donation. Nevertheless, his loyalty earned him the contracts for producing uniforms for the SA and SS, as well as the Wehrmacht. After the war, Boss was fined for his collaboration with the Nazis and died in 1948. His son-in-law developed the business into a major luxury brand. A 2011 book on the history of the company prompted a belated apology from it for its use of forced labour, including prisoners.
A similar history surrounds the global brands of Adidas and Puma athletic shoes whose founders, the brothers Adolf and Rudolf Dassler, also joined the Nazi Party in 1933. ‘Rudy’ was the ardent believer in Nazi ideology while ‘Adi’ was a sports coach in the Hitler Youth. Together they manufactured shoes, including sports shoes. The 1936 Olympics in Berlin gave the brothers fame and fortune outfitting the athletes, which excluded Jews who were barred from competing under the Nuremberg Race Laws of 1935. Ironically, the Dasslers shod the African-American sprinter, Jesse Owens, for the Games.
After the war, when the Dasslers were called to account for their collaboration with the Nazi regime by using their factory to make anti-tank weapons, the brothers blamed each other, Adolf for profiteering, Rudolf for his allegiance to the Nazi Party, each in a bid to hold onto the business. In the end, they were let off lightly by the post-war tribunals and were free to continue their shoe business, which split into two after their partnership ended.
In 1948 Adolf founded Adidas and Rudolf founded Puma, combining high performance on the track with fashion in the street. Neither ever apologised or showed remorse for their Nazi involvement, nor have their companies addressed their dark history. Such is the not-so-innocent history of fashion.
When appearance is all, then the adage, quoted by Shakespeare and Mark Twain alike, that ‘clothes maketh the man’ stands to reason.
But we are more than our appearance, and even the most elaborate creations on the red carpet in New York’s September Fashion Week cannot hide the naked truth. The ancients knew what our fashion-obsessed culture assiduously denies: the inner character of a person and not their appearance is what truly makes the man and the woman.
Cicero’s warning, Esse quam videri (to be, rather than to seem to be’) chimes with the Book of Proverbs xi 22 that, ‘Like a gold ring in a pig’s snout, is a beautiful woman who lacks discretion.’
The fashion world … beware.
