Comments on: 7. Channeling Coco

By: Susan Tiner

Susan Tiner — Sun, 03 Apr 2011 23:56:39 +0000

Mardel, you will love the Manchester books. I can not tell you how sad I was when I finished reading the second volume as I'm currently a little bit in love with Churchill and want more, more, more. Fortunately, per this link, it looks like there will be a Volume 3 published later this year.

By: Mardel

Mardel — Sun, 03 Apr 2011 22:05:10 +0000

That passage in The Beautiful Fall really bothered me but I have not read this book. Chanel the designer intrigues me. Chanel the woman makes me uncomfortable, or at least this is feeling I have developed over the years, and anti-semiticism is part of this. I think you are a very astute reader.

The Manchester books are on my too-read list. I have been a bit of a mini-Churchill reader and they are the center pieces. One of these days I shall get to them.

By: Susan Tiner

Susan Tiner — Sat, 26 Mar 2011 02:59:45 +0000

Angie, that’s how I felt — uncomfortable.

By: Angie Muresan

Angie Muresan — Sat, 26 Mar 2011 01:58:47 +0000

Susan, you summarized the book so well. I have already read it and agree with you that her antisemitism made me feel uncomfortable.

By: Susan Tiner

Susan Tiner — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 06:20:23 +0000

Hi Pat,

I wish I could see a photo of you in that knock off Chanel suit.

I love it when you tell personal stories on your blog — maybe it’s time for some photos too?

By: savvysavingbytes

savvysavingbytes — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 04:44:45 +0000

This is the first time I’ve heard of “emancipation” in the context you’re writing about here. I had heavy duty family problems also, but at least I had the support of my family to get through that time. I can only imagine how difficult it was to work your way alone through your parent’s abandonment.

As far as Channel goes, I’ve seen her clothes at various shows at the Met and they ALWAYS stand out as the most elegant and beautifully designed of all the designers present. Everything I’ve heard about her suggested she was tough as nails and ambitious as the devil. And she didn’t shrink from sometimes playing with the devil if the situation required it.

One of my favorite all time outfits was a knock off Channel suit that I wore till it became a bunch of threads…

By: Susan Tiner

Susan Tiner — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 02:24:19 +0000

Terri, I admire you and DH for trying. It can be disastrous for a family taking on such a huge responsibility. I think that’s why I forgive my stepmother for wanting to remove me from the household. My issue was with my two biological parents, not my stepmother or the other kind adults who offered help at the time. My biological parents let me slip through the cracks, all the while moving forward, quite successfully as it turns out, with their own individual lives.

By: Susan Tiner

Susan Tiner — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 02:11:54 +0000

Rose, thank you for taking the time to read my background story. It certainly was a trial, but as I noted in an earlier comment to Terri, the real trial unfolded later. My parents treated me as if that whole phase were a thing of the past. They had moved on, so why didn’t I? After my son was born, they were thrilled to be grandparents and wanted to resume family relations with their daughter as if nothing had happened, or if it had, it was now safely in the past. I felt invisible.

I can imagine that it must have been easy for young persons to get swept up into the 1920s-1930s fascist movements, and I understand that this was not a time for inspiration in terms of racial and religious tolerance anywhere in the world, including the US. However, the Duke of Westminster represented the self-serving attitudes of the British upper classes at that time — they feared the Bolsheviks above all and believed Hitler would keep them in check. Chanel, trying to make her way in a pre-feminist time certainly needed wealthy men to finance her way to independence and I respect an independent woman. It’s just that she kept on making associations with unsavory characters long after it was necessary for her survival or success.

By: Terri

Terri — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 01:14:53 +0000

The child would be DH’s nephew. His mother would have been DH’s sister and no one knew where the father was. We had legal guardianship of the nephew for a number of years, but he proved to be more than we could handle. He ended up in state’s care. At age 17, they set him up in an apartment of his own…and now, he IS an upstanding young man. I cannot speak for his feelings towards us, although he does keep in touch.

By: RoseAG

RoseAG — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 00:25:18 +0000

Reading your story, which I hadn’t realized was buried in your blog, was amazing. I grew up in a traditional family in the Midwest but had a good friend whose parents were divorced and who was out on her own at a similar young age and your trials remind me of how it was with her.

I don’t want to seem sympathetic to the actions of Nazi Germany and the things they did, but I think that sometimes to view from inside was different than how we think about it in hindsight.

My mother-in-law studied in Germany in the 1930s and was in Berlin during the Kristallnacht, also to referred to as the Night of Broken Glass.

She was swept up in the excitement of the times, the youth, the vigor, the lies that Hitler told people. When she returned to New York and expressed her enthusiasm for Hitler’s youth party her family was horrified and quickly set her straight. I didn’t meet her until she was into her 60s and absolutely can not fathom her supporting Nazi Germany, which convinces me that people got into the movement and lost their bearings.