Coco Chanel
Although Chanel was viewed as a prominent figure of luxury fashion during her life, Chanel's influence has been examined further post death in 1971. She continued to spend her final years in luxury evermore at her magnificent Ritz apartment. When Chanel died, the first lady of France, Mme, Pompidou organized a hero's tribute. Soon damaging documents from French intelligence agencies were released that outlined Chanel's war time involvements that quickly ended her monumental funeral plans.
Chanel
At War's end, upon the Allied liberation of France, Chanel was arrested for having collaborated with the Nazis. In September 1944, the Free French Purge Committee, the "épuration", summoned Chanel for interrogation about her collaborationism, yet, without documentary evidence of or witnesses to her collaboration with the Nazis, and because of Churchill's secret intervention in her behalf, the "épuration" released Coco Chanel from arrest as a traitor to France. Despite having been freed by the political grace of Churchill, the strength of the rumours of Chanel's Nazi collaboration had made it not possible for her to remain in France; so Coco Chanel and her German lover, Hans Günther von Dincklage, went into an eight-year exile to Switzerland.