Coco Chanel_ An Intimate Life - Lisa Chaney [189]
At the onset of the war, before leaving France for America, the Wertheimers had cleverly entrusted their business to a cousin, who in turn cleverly appointed a non-Jewish industrialist, Félix Amiot, to be the front for the family. He had continued marketing the Chanel perfumes during the occupation. At the same time, the Wertheimers had set up production of Chanel N° 5 in America, where they made yet more perfumes, using natural essences from the south of France, that didn’t follow the original formulas.
These activities, for which Gabrielle was given ridiculously small royalties, continued after the war. Chambrun and the president of the French Bar Association, called in to assist him, advised Gabrielle that “an amicable settlement will bring you much more than litigation.” But relishing the thought of a fight, Gabrielle would not agree. The Wertheimers argued that they had made a major financial contribution to Parfums Chanel, had built it into a worldwide business and that Gabrielle’s contribution was no longer relevant. She was no longer a public figure, and was too old to offer the talent, youth and celebrity she had possessed when she had launched Nº 5. Gabrielle was incensed: “So I’m too old! They think I’m too old, those—bastards!”
In the two months before the case came to trial, Gabrielle was very busy. Eventually, she handed Chambrun several tiny phials and asked him to give these to his wife. Could she make up phials like this from her own home? Chambrun said she could, with the proviso that they must be presents. Josée de Chambrun declared the perfume exquisite, as did a Russian “nose” called in to confirm her opinion. Gabrielle then instructed the perfumer in Switzerland to make up a hundred bottles of her various perfumes. The bottles were not the same design as the originals and were prefixed with the word “Mademoiselle,” making them “different” perfumes, too. Gabrielle then sent them as “gifts’ to all the smartest department stores in New York. The Wertheimers asked her lawyer, “But what does she really want?” Not long afterward, they made a settlement out of court.
While the Wertheimer brothers had played rough with Gabrielle during the war, they were also distinguished losers, and the terms of the new agreement were most favorable to Gabrielle. She had the right to make Mademoiselle Chanel perfumes anywhere in the world—a serious threat to her partners she never acted upon; she was to be paid substantial damages, with interest, for the sales of Parfums Chanel in the United States, Britain and France; she was to have a kind of monopoly conceded to her in Switzerland—“her fief, her kingdom”—and she would be paid a royalty of 2 percent on all gross sales of Chanel perfumes throughout the whole world.
At the conclusion of this intense legal battle, in which Gabrielle had joined with righteous indignation, tremendous enjoyment and considerable low cunning, she was left a multimillionaire. After the agreement had been signed, she took the Chambruns back to rue Cambon for a celebration. “My dear Bunny,” she said to Chambrun, “I have already made a great deal of money in my life, but, as you know, I’ve also spent a lot. Now, thanks to you, I shall never have to work again . . . I’m not going to do anything anymore.” That was in 1947.
After the Nuremberg war trials for the twenty-four major criminals, in the Ministries trials, Walter Schellenberg was given the lightest penalty. In 1951, he telephoned Gabrielle. He had not long since been released from prison, and he and his wife would live in Switzerland