An Homage... To Coco Chanel

What would you do if you saw someone flaunting this Camélia Ruban bow watch by Chanel? The price, undercounted, is $233,000 at the Chanel store in Beverly Hills. This is how it was described by Modern Luxury:

The Bowed and BeautifulSo mesmerizing, Chanel's dazzling Camélia Ruban bow watch is enough to stop time. Feuturing more than 1,500 black and white diamonds set in 18K white gold, this stunning sparkler dazzles. Bit don't let the silvery siren fool you-- it is far more than just a pretty face, as was Coco Chanel herself. As a symbol mademoiselle held most dear, the piece's bow motif pays elegant homage to her too.

Nice of them to remind us that Coco-- born Gabrielle Bonheur Chanel in 1883-- held bow motifs dear. They neglected to mention that Chanel was also a prostitute, a drug addict, an elitist snob, a right-wing extremist, an anti-Semite, a virulent homophobe (and a lesbian!) and, inevitably, a Nazi collaborator. She used her status as an "Aryan" during the German occupation of Paris to seize control of Parfums Chanel from the Wertheimer family, who she denounced as Jews. A typical right-winger she sold out her country and worked as a Nazi spy during World War II and worked directly for General Walter Schellenberg, chief of SS intelligence and traveled to Berlin to talk strategy with Heinrich Himmler. Author Hal Vaughn, who discovered much of the documentary evidence of Chanel's work for the Nazis pointed out that "A lot of people in this world don't want the iconic figure of Gabrielle Coco Chanel, one of France's great cultural idols, destroyed. This is definitely something that a lot of people would have preferred to put aside, to forget, to just go on selling Chanel scarves and jewelry."Yes, like the $233,000 bow watch with the 1,500 black and white diamonds. So do you see yourself doing-- even if just metaphorically-- if you see some L.A. lass, sporting one? Would you admire it and tell her how lovely she looks with it on? Would you quietly lust for it yourself? Or, on the other end of the spectrum, would you shoot her in the face and chop off her arm and have a taxidermist prepare it for a place over your mantle? Or something else?