CoCo Chanel

The full version of Karl Lagerfeld's latest short film for Chanel, called Once Upon a Time, has finally landed online.

The film, which stars Keira Knightley as a young Gabrielle Chanel, tells the story of one of the designer's first shops, which she opened in the French seaside resort town of Deauville in 1913.

In the film, which will be screened at Chanel's Resort 2014 presentation in Singapore this month, Chanel is helped along by her aunt Adrienne — played by actress Clotilde Hemse — as she caters to wealthy clients like Jacqueline Forzane (played by Ashleigh Good) and Ida Rubinstein (portrayed by Caroline de Maigret). When Vita Sackville-West — played by Saskia de Brauw — looks through the windows of the store toward the end of the film, she asks, "I wonder what it will be in 100 years from now?"

A look at what it was like 100 years ago, in the video below, and a look at Chanel's past Resort films, here.

The Chanel jacket might have risen to worldwide acclaim in 1954, but its timeless nature owes much to the reason it was created: freedom of movement.

In a new film released by the house, Coco Chanel herself is seen in an interview, explaining that the hardest part of her job is "enabling women to move with ease, to not feel like they're in costume. Not changing attitude, or manner, depending on their dress. It's very difficult. And the human body is always moving."

But in the early '50s, the prevailing fashion was highly decorative, wasp-waisted, and decidedly harder to move in than Chanel's straight-cut tweed jackets and wraparound skirts. It's no surprise that Chanel's masculine jacket started what the house rightly calls a revolution in the way women dress. Since the '80s, when Karl Lagerfeld took over the house, the jacket has been shown in scores of different fabrics and colors, but the spirit of the original design (and the way they're made) remains intact.

A look at what led to its creation in the video below.

These stories and more here, in our daily news roundup.

• Katie Grand, Editor-in-Chief of Love, says that this month's Kate Moss shoot with Tim Walker taps into her love of British models: "I don’t think they take the whole modeling thing so seriously and generally know how to have a good time," she commented. [Nowness]
  

• Keep an eye out for Karlie Kloss and Pastry Chef Christina Tosi, who will be handing out Karlie's Kookies from a "Kookie Truck" at Lincoln Center on Wednesday. [PS Fashion News Inbox]
  

• 3.1 Phillip Lim tapped Alexis Bittar to design a custom pair of earrings for today's runway show. [WWD]
  

• Are flash-sale sites losing their luster? A few industry experts think so. [WWD]
  

• Countess Louise J. Esterhazy, who wrote for WWD in the '70s, has returned to the publication with a monthly column. Her first piece recounts an evening she once spent with Coco Chanel. [PS Fashion News Inbox]
  

• Julia Restoin Roitfeld, who had daughter Romy last May, will soon launch an online publication dedicated to motherhood. [Telegraph]
  

• Asos is offering a 25 percent discount just for college students until midnight tomorrow. [Asos]
  

• Have We Met Before, the short film for Donna Karan's new line of hosiery will star Angelica Houston. [New York Post]
  

• In other Donna Karan news, the designer has teamed up with Rent the Runway to design an exclusive collection of rentable eveningwear. [Rent the Runway]
  

All the bits fit to print here, in our daily news roundup.

• Tom Ford and Justin Timberlake joined forces for the singer's soon-to-be released album. Ford established the style for the cover artwork and Timberlake's latest music video, Suit & Tie, even features bespoke tailored pieces from the designer. [Vogue UK]
  

• A bag that was on the same plane as Viottorio Missoni has surfaced on the island of Curacao. [WWD]
  

• A 17th-century masterpiece by Charles Le Brun was discovered in Coco Chanel's suite at The Ritz Paris. The painting will be auctioned by Christie's for an estimated $673,000 with proceeds going to charity. [Telegraph]
  

• Alexander Wang will introduce the ads for his T by Alexander Wang Spring 2013 collection with a little help from Bon Qui Qui. The designer has revived a 2007 MADtv sketch for a short film that also features Simon Doonan and Alessandra Ambrosio. The short will debut online this Wednesday. [Style.com]
  

• Graydon Carter of Vanity Fair was recently spotted waiting a table of socialites at Beatrice Inn. He "didn’t wear an apron, but he did memorize and tell them the specials and pour their wine," a source said. The act was part of an auction item from the CFDA and Vogue Fashion For Sandy Relief initiative. [New York Post]
  

• Paper Magazine's website has a new look. [Fashionologie Inbox]
  

• Anya Ziourova's beauty secret? Ice water. "Every morning I splash my face with ice-cold water. That always comes first," the Tatler Russia and Allure Russia editor said. "It's really good for your skin because it makes your pores smaller, and your skin gets tighter." [Into the Gloss]
  

• Fendi will fund a restoration of the fountains of Rome, starting with the Trevi. [WWD]
  

• Marc Jacobs says he chose the motif of twins for his Louis Vuitton Spring 2013 ad campaign to underscore the collection's repetitious checkerboard pattern. [Elle]
  

• The Barneys New York warehouse sale will once again be held online. [Racked]
  

• The show journal for Hedi Slimane's debut collection of Saint Laurent menswear (below) features artwork by graphic designer Brian Roettinger. [AnotherMag]

>> Christian Louboutin says he deserves credit for Chanel's iconic quilted ballet flats — and that Coco Chanel had nothing to do with them.

Louboutin — who celebrated the 20th anniversary of his eponymous shoe label last year — told The Daily Telegraph that he came up with the idea for the quilted shoe during his brief stint as a footwear designer for Chanel.

"Everyone thinks it's part of Coco's DNA, that shoe," he said. "But it hadn't been done before I got there."

The perception that the Cambon flat is an archival Chanel shoe is not surprising; after all, it's named for Rue Cambon, the Paris street where Coco Chanel opened her first store. What's more, its quilted material points back to the Chanel 2.55 handbag, which was introduced in 1955.

Louboutin also worked as a designer for Charles Jourdan, Maud Frizon, and Yves Saint Laurent before opening his own line in 1991.

Coco Chanel in 1920

>> Time magazine today released its list of the 100 greatest fashion icons, a collection of designers, brands, models, muses, photographers, editors, and stylists meant to be the definitive guide to the "visionaries that changed how we think about what we wear, and how we wear it."

The list includes all of the expected players — Coco Chanel is there, as are Yves Saint Laurent, Anna Wintour, Naomi Campbell, and Steven Meisel — but there are also a few people most wouldn't think of for a list like this. Sarah Blakely, inventor of Spanx, is included because she "has helped shape the modern woman — literally." Jacques Heim and Louis Réard, the men who simultaneously invented what eventually became the bikini are also on the list.

Time only mentions style influencers who made an impact after 1923 — the beginning of Time magazine — which means the list reaches back to people like '20s icon Zelda Fitzgerald and Chanel rival Elsa Schiaparelli. The list doesn't include any notable retailers (Andrew Saks and Ikram Goldman would have been worthy additions), and it's also not very diverse — of the 100 people on the list, only eight are black and two are Asian.

Still, the list is a testament to how vital the creative forces of the fashion industry are to the world at large. Take a look at the whole thing on Time.

>> Coco Chanel would have marked her 128th birthday tomorrow, and though she's been gone for just over 40 years now, new allegations keep popping up about her life. One upcoming biography, out this November, recently made headlines for positing that Chanel did drugs and was bisexual, and now another biography — just out this week — alleges that Chanel was an anti-Semite and a Nazi spy for Germany's Abwehr military intelligence organization.

Citing evidence culled from archives around the world — and recently declassified documents — author Hal Vaughan makes such claims in Sleeping with the Enemy: Coco Chanel's Secret War. The book was spurred by an accidental find in France's national police archive, Vaughan says: "I was looking for something else and I come across this document saying 'Chanel is a Nazi agent, her number is blah, blah, blah and her pseudonym is Westminster.' I look at this again and I say, 'What the hell is this?' I couldn't believe my eyes! Then I really started hunting through all of the archives, in the United States, in London, in Berlin and in Rome and I come across not one, but 20, 30, 40 absolutely solid archival materials on Chanel and her lover, Baron Hans Gunther von Dincklage, who was a professional Abwehr spy,"

Vaughan also suggests that Chanel's alleged anti-Semitism caused her to capitalize on laws permitting the expropriation of Jewish property — allowing her to gain control of the Chanel perfume lines from the Jewish-born Wertheimer brothers, who'd helped make her Chanel No. 5 a worldwide best-seller.

In response to the book's allegations of anti-Semitism, Chanel released a statement: "Such insinuations cannot go unchallenged. [Coco Chanel] would hardly have formed a relationship with the family of the owners or counted Jewish people among her close friends and professional partners such as the Rothschild family, the photographer Irving Penn or the well-known French writer Joseph Kessel had these really been her views. It is unlikely."

"We also know that she and Churchill were close friends for a long time. She apparently approached him about acting as an intermediary between the Allies and the Germans for a peace settlement known as Operation Modelhut. No one knows for sure exactly what happened or what her role was to be. There are several different versions and it will no doubt always remain a mystery."

"More than 57 books have been written about Gabrielle Chanel. To decide for yourself, we would encourage you to consult some of the more serious ones."

As for Chanel's relationship with alleged Nazi spy Baron Hans Gunther von Dincklage, Chanel noted: "We know for a fact that she had a relationship during the war with a German aristocrat she had met in Paris in the Thirties. The timing of this romance with a German was unfortunate even if Baron Von Dincklage's mother was English and their relationship started before the war."

>> Many a biography and biopic have come out delving into bits and pieces of Coco Chanel's life, but an upcoming biography is said to have unearthed some new details. With the release of Coco Chanel: An Intimate Life, out Nov. 10, biographer Lisa Chaney claims to have concrete evidence that Chanel used drugs, embraced bisexuality, and had an affair with Salvador Dali while he was married. Chaney, through an email from her publicist, also says she accessed documents in the Swiss Federal Archives that prove Chanel’s German lover Hans Gunther von Dincklage spied for the Nazis throughout World War II. “Whether Chanel was aware of this is unknown, but after that war she lived in neutral Switzerland for a while, to avoid any proceedings against her,” the email noted. [WWD]