New York Post - USA (2020-10-25)

New York Post, Sunday, October 25, 2020

nypost.com

By RAQUEL LANERI

Toto Koopman: beautiful, bisex-

ual, mixed-race cover girl. Coco

Chanel: brilliant, bisexual, business-

savvy fashion designer. The two

women attended the same glittering

parties, shared friends and lovers,

and even worked together, with the

“exotic,” long-limbed, green-eyed

Koopman modeling for the famed

couturier in the late 1920s.

Then came World War II.

A new book, “Toto & Coco” (Kel-

vin House), tells the parallel war-

time stories of these two fashion

plates and the wildly divergent

paths they would take — one cozy-

ing up with the Nazis; the other risk-

ing her life to fight fascism.

“They went totally different

ways,” author Alan Frame told The

Post.

Indeed. Chanel spent the war

holed up in the Ritz with her Ge-

stapo lover, Baron Günther von

Dincklage. Koopman, meanwhile,

spied for the British, joined the Ital-

ian Resistance and endured horrors

in Ravensbrück, Hitler’s concentra-

tion camp for women.

“The contrast between Chanel liv-

ing throughout the war in the Ritz,

and Toto living in caves, in jail in

Italy and then in Ravensbrück — it

was so dramatic,” said Frame.

Koopman was born in 1908 to a

Dutch cavalry officer and his half-

Javanese wife in Indonesia. Her real

name was Catharina, but her family

called her “Toto,” after her father’s

favorite horse, from infancy. She had

a glitzy childhood: pet kangaroos

and elephants, servants and nannies,

boarding school in Holland and fin-

ishing school in London. By the time

a 19-year-old Toto ran off to Paris, in

1928, she spoke Dutch, French,

English, German and Italian.

“The fact that she could speak five

languages fluently certainly helped

in her becoming a spy,” said Frame.

Koopman captivated the City of

Light right away, posing in the finest

couture for Vogue — becoming the

magazine’s first biracial cover model

— and sleeping with both men and

women, including the actress Tallu-

lah Bankhead. She landed a job as

Chanel’s house model, but left after

six months. “[Chanel] was a bully,”

Koopman would later say, though

the women remained social for

much of the 1930s and ’40s.

In 1934 Koopman began an affair

with 55-year-old William Maxwell

Aitken, aka Lord Beaverbrook, a

Canadian-British newspaper baron

and wartime cabinet minister. (She

later ditched him for his son, a dash-

ing pilot, whom she considered the

love of her life.) Beaverbrook used

the bright model to gather intelli-

gence and gossip for his newspapers,

and she eavesdropped on conversa-

tions at the opera and other high-so-

ciety events throughout Europe.

During one of her trips to Rome,

Koopman learned that Mussolini

was planning to invade Ethiopia

using poison gas, which he did sev-

eral months later. While staying with

Chanel at the Ritz, she learned that

the Duke and Duchess of Windsor

were planning to go to Germany and

try to work out a peace

agreement with Hitler.

“She had great powers

of observation and a great

memory,” said Frame. “It

also helped that she was a

very attractive woman.”

Koopman wasn’t above

seducing the enemy: Her

conquests included a

German intelligence offi-

cer, a Gestapo officer sta-

tioned in Holland and, allegedly,

Mussolini’s son-in-law.

Yet in 1940, while stationed in

Florence, Koopman left the glamor-

ous world of espionage and joined

the gritty Italian Resistance.

“I thought I could join for a while

and then report back from the

hotel,” she later said. But “once I was

in, I became totally immersed.”

She lived in caves, subsisting on

foraged squirrels. “I think I

missed not going to the

hairdresser most... and I

missed privacy,” the model

said. “There certainly

wasn’t much of that living

from place to place with so

many men.”

Koopman helped blow

up enemy supplies and

connect Jews and escaped

detainees to Resistance

networks between bouts in jail.

The Gestapo caught up with

Koopman in 1943 and sent her to

Ravensbrück. The women who

avoided execution had to perform

slave labor, hauling wheelbarrows

piled with dead bodies, and even

forced sterilization. “I would rather

have been shot immediately than to

endure this,” Koopman later said.

She did endure, however, and after

the camp was liberated in 1945,

eventually settled in Switzerland

and again in London, where she

helped her new companion, lesbian

Resistance member Erica Brausen,

run an art gallery representing the

likes of Francis Bacon. She died in

1991 at the age of 82, after suffering a

stroke.

“It would have been very easy for

Toto to sit out the war, having this

comfortable, well-heeled life that

she was used to,” Frame said. “But

fortunately there was something in

her that said, ‘No, I can’t do this; I

have to stand up for what I know is

right.’ She was incredibly brave.”

Cover model

spy of WWII

Vogue star seduced enemies for intel

SPLIT STYLE:

A new book, “Toto A new book, “Toto

& Coco,” parallels & Coco,” parallels

Vogue cover Vogue cover

model (inset) Toto model (inset) Toto

Koopman’s life as Koopman’s life as

a Italian Resist-

ance spy with that ance spy with that

of fashion

designer Coco designer Coco

Chanel, who sup-Chanel, who sup-

ported the Nazis.

Getty Images

were planning to go to Germany and She lived in caves, subsisting on

Hundreds of city refugees

have registered to vote in

the Hamptons, where they

could decide the dead heat

in eastern Long Island’s

congressional race.

Polls show Republican in-

cumbent Rep. Lee Zeldin,

40, neck and neck with

rookie Democratic candi-

date Nancy Goroff, 52, in a

district covering much of

Suffolk County.

“I changed my registra-

tion to East Hampton be-

cause I feel my vote counts

for a lot more here,” said a

Manhattan lawyer and reg-

istered Republican who did

not want to be identified.

He said he decamped to

his East Hampton home

during the worst of the cor-

onavirus pandemic and de-

cided to make it his primary

residence.

“As long as they have bona

fide residences in Suffolk

County, they can change

their registration,” said vet-

eran election lawyer Jerry

Goldfeder. “There are hotly

contested local races in the

Hamptons where their vote

can make a difference.”

In East Hampton, 876 Big

Apple residents with a sec-

ond home there changed

their registration, according

to the Suffolk Board of Elec-

tions. The overwhelming

majority of the city slickers,

672, are registered Demo-

crats. Isabel Vincent

‘COV’ vote

may turn

LI elex

Medgar Evers College

failed to pay adjunct profes-

sors after classes resumed

in September.

The 205 adjuncts were

supposed to get checks

Sept. 10 and 24.

But most of them were

not paid until Oct. 8, and by

Thursday, 5 percent of them

were still awaiting pay-

checks, a college spokes-

woman said.

“Adjuncts were on-

boarded late as a result of

the enrollment and budget-

ary challenges that were

caused by the pandemic,”

Provost Augustine Okereke

wrote in an Aug. 28 e-mail

to department chairs.

Melissa Klein

Evers Coll.

stiffs profs