Coco Chanel used Nazi anti-Jewish laws to try to take her perfume company from the Wertheimers, who had signed it over to an aircraft maker

In 1924 Gabrielle Chanel formed Parfums Chanel with the brothers Pierre and Paul Wertheimer. The Wertheimers took 70 percent and paid for making and selling Chanel No. 5. Théophile Bader took 20 percent. Chanel took 10 percent for the use of her name. In 1935 she hired the lawyer René de Chambrun to renegotiate, and failed. The Wertheimers, who were Jewish, fled to the United States in 1940. Before leaving they transferred ownership to Félix Amiot, a non-Jewish industrialist who supplied the Germans with military aircraft throughout the war. In 1941 Chanel petitioned German officials to give her the company under the new laws stripping Jews of property, presenting herself as its "Aryan" heir. She did not know about the transfer. The Germans kept Amiot as the legal owner, and she lost. At the end of the war Amiot returned the company to the Wertheimers. In 1947 Pierre Wertheimer paid Chanel $400,000 and agreed to a 2 percent royalty on all Chanel products. In 1954 he financed her return to couture and took the rights to the Chanel name for all products. Chanel died in her suite at the Ritz on 10 January 1971, aged 87. She is buried in the Bois-de-Vaux cemetery in Lausanne. The Wertheimer family owns all of Chanel today.