Why am I passionate about this?

I published the novel Ehrenfried & Cohn in 2016 about the decimation of the Jewish fashion industry in Berlin by the Nazis. I studied at the University of Arts in Berlin and became a fashion reporter for newspapers. Later I worked as a producer and journalist for German Public Broadcasting, the BBC in London, and PBS and CBS in New York City. I currently share my time between London and Berlin writing fact books on Jewish fashion and as a lecturer on fashion history in the US.


I wrote

Ehrenfried and Cohn: Goodbye, Berlin - The Last Fashion Show

By Uwe Westphal ,

Book cover of Ehrenfried and Cohn: Goodbye, Berlin - The Last Fashion Show

What is my book about?

Many years ago, I started to ask questions about the Nazi regime and its impact on the fashion industry in…

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The books I picked & why

Book cover of The Ten: The Stories Behind the Fashion Chassis

Uwe Westphal Why I love this book

What connects the most important fashion styles over the last 80 years? The answer: the stories of those who made these clothing items fashion and trends, often globally. Lauren Cochrane illustrates lavishly this with a wealth of exactly these stories and plenty of pictures. These 10 classic fashion items are part of the universal language of style we all somehow know but not too much about them: The White T-shirt, Miniskirt, Hoodie, Jeans, Ballet flat, Breton top, Biker jacket, Little black dress, Stiletto, Trench.

Familiar, commonplace, ubiquitous - each piece has become an emblem of a certain style, carrying its own connotations and historical significance. They aren't just clothes - our social history is contained within these perfect 10 pieces. They're vessels that hold the history of style, politics, and identity: while trends may come and go, these are here to stay.

The Ten puts fashion in context. Showing how certain pieces are just as pervasive on the catwalk as on the street, Lauren Cochrane's crucial volume defines the fashion items that make up your wardrobe, and how they got there, providing the perfect excuse - a pedigree, a narrative, a realness - for the reader to wear them time and time again.

By Lauren Cochrane ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Ten as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

'Amazing - what perfect timing for fashion's new wave'
Barbara Hulanicki, Founder of BIBA

These 10 classic fashion items are part of the universal language of style: the White T-shirt, Miniskirt, Hoodie, Jeans, Ballet flat, Breton top, Biker jacket, Little black dress, Stiletto, Trench.

While trends may come and go, they remain symbols of perennial cool, part of a capsule collection of chic emblems that represent who we are, who we want to be and how we want to be seen.

The Ten tells the story of each item's creation, its journey to popularity, and why it matters today. These…


Book cover of Sleeping with the Enemy: Coco Chanel's Secret War

Uwe Westphal Why I love this book

When the first Australian exhibition of the work of fashion designer Gabrielle (Coco) Chanel (1910-1971) opened at the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne in July 2021, the focus was on the legendary fame of the Parisian fashion icon. Chanel was and still is the figurehead of haute couture. At the same time, as historians and observers interested in fashion have noted with disappointment, the Nazi past of the fashion icon Chanel is still being ignored.

Yet the author and journalist Hal W. Vaughan uncovered the facts in his book facts that are not read with pleasure in the Parisian fashion scene.

In this explosive narrative, Hal Vaughan pieces together Chanel's hidden years, from the Nazi occupation of Paris to the aftermath of the Liberation. He uncovers the truth of Chanel's anti-Semitism and long-whispered collaboration with Hitler's officials. In particular, Chanel's long relationship with 'Spatz', Baron von Dincklage, previously described as a tennis-playing playboy and German diplomat, and finally exposed here as a Nazi master spy and agent who ran an intelligence ring in the Mediterranean and reported directly to Joseph Goebbels.

Sleeping with the Enemy tells in detail how Chanel became a German intelligence operative, Abwehr agent F-7124; how she was enlisted in spy missions, and why she evaded arrest in France after the war. It reveals the role played by Winston Churchill in her escape from retribution; and how, after a nine-year exile in Switzerland with Dincklage, and despite French hesitant investigations into her espionage activities, Coco was able to return to Paris and triumphantly reinvent herself - and rebuild the House of Chanel.

It is a tragic fact, that the “House of Chanel” and other top international fashion firms, like Hugo Boss in Germany, who collaborated with the Nazi leaders, favour a cover up instead of admitting their collaboration.

By Hal Vaughan ,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Sleeping with the Enemy as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This explosive narrative reveals for the first time the shocking hidden years of Coco Chanel’s life: her collaboration with the Nazis in Paris, her affair with a master spy, and her work for the German military intelligence service and Himmler’s SS.

Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel was the high priestess of couture who created the look of the modern woman. By the 1920s she had amassed a fortune and went on to create an empire. But her life from 1941 to 1954 has long been shrouded in rumor and mystery, never clarified by Chanel or her many biographers. Hal Vaughan exposes the…


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Book cover of Grand Old Unraveling: The Republican Party, Donald Trump, and the Rise of Authoritarianism

Grand Old Unraveling by John Kenneth White,

It didn’t begin with Donald Trump. When the Republican Party lost five straight presidential elections during the 1930s and 1940s, three things happened: (1) Republicans came to believe that presidential elections are rigged; (2) Conspiracy theories arose and were believed; and (3) The presidency was elevated to cult-like status.

Long…

Book cover of Blood & Banquets: A Berlin Social Diary

Uwe Westphal Why I love this book

Bella Fromm’s diary is far more than a book of gossip from a fashion reporter who delivers light-hearted columns during peaceful times. Bella started writing about Berlin’s political high society already in 1930. By the time Hitler took over power in 1933, she was a known observer of what the new leaders had in mind. And fashion played always a very important fact in her writing. She still managed to write her articles with skill and bravery.

Her diaries are a true story of a Jewish reporter who became an intimate witness to the rise of Nazism in Germany. Fromm wrote a social column for a liberal Berlin newspaper. Attending luncheons, fashion shows, teas & dinners during the 1930s, she met everybody of importance, including von Hindenberg, Franz von Papen, Goebbels, Goering, Himmler, Leni Riefenstahl, & other political & social figures. In this secret journal, smuggled out piecemeal before she left Germany, Fromm describes her experiences & conversations with this cast of characters that would soon play shocking roles in Hitler's Third Reich. Her diary is today a classic social and fashion historical testament. As much as politics changed for the worst, fashion changed as well. Fromm‘s reporting reflects how fashion style after 1933 became political. That makes her diaries, published in 1990 in New York, so important. Everyone interested in Fashion and society in Germany under Hitler should read her memories.

By Bella Fromm ,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Blood & Banquets as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The diary, smuggled out of Nazi Germany, of a Jewish woman who wrote the social column for a major Berlin newspaper, and was able to observe the rise of the Nazis


Book cover of Fashion Climbing: A Memoir

Uwe Westphal Why I love this book

When Bill (William John) Cunningham (1929-2016), son of an Irish Catholic family from Boston, moved to New York at the tender age of 19 in 1948, it became the life-defining step in his career as probably the most famous fashion photographer in the metropolis. He had been interested in fashion from an early age and sold his first hats. After returning from military service in Korea in 1953, he began photographing fashion and writing articles for Women's Wear Daily and the Chicago Tribune.

It is no exaggeration to say that Cunningham's fashion sense and photography quickly shaped a new style of fashion journalism. His "street style" brought fashion, no matter how expensive or luxurious, into the world of everyday life. Cunningham made fashion interesting again only through his point of view and photographs. The quiet, always curious and meticulous Cunningham also became known for his commitment to the gay scene.

“If you study Bill’s career at the New York Times, he emerges as an incognito activist who has celebrated gay pride week after week even as he excused himself from the increasingly sexualized society that he chronicled”, wrote The Cut 2013 about Cunningham. “…Without being partisan or political, he has raised awareness of the vital role of gays in New York’s culture…”, and therefore of New York’s fashion culture. Fashion Climbing is the story of a young man striving to be the person he was born to be: a true original. But although he was one of the city's most recognized and treasured figures.

By Bill Cunningham ,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Fashion Climbing as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The New York Times bestseller

"[An] obscenely enjoyable romp." -The New York Times Book Review

The untold story of a New York City legend's education in creativity and style

For Bill Cunningham, New York City was the land of freedom, glamour, and, above all, style. Growing up in a lace-curtain Irish suburb of Boston, secretly trying on his sister's dresses and spending his evenings after school in the city's chicest boutiques, Bill dreamed of a life dedicated to fashion. But his desires were a source of shame for his family, and after dropping out of Harvard, he had to fight…


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Book cover of First Quiver

First Quiver by Beth C. Greenberg,

When the 3,375-year-old virgin of Mount Olympus sends a love-tipped arrow into the wrong rump, the gods punish him with a taste of his own medicine.

Banished to Earth, he lands in present-day Indiana in a magnificent human body and swiftly leaves virginity behind. But Cupid’s carnal spree is cut…

Book cover of The Value of Nothing

Uwe Westphal Why I love this book

Fashion is, without any question, a matter of one's own taste. Or so one would think. But no other successful fashion designer has ever analysed and observed the New York fashion world of the 1950s to mid-60s as mercilessly and literarily as John Weitz did in his novel published in 1970. With his clearly English-influenced men’s designs he kept his distance from New York’s high society. Perhaps this was due to his unusual life path.

John Weitz, born to a famous Berlin Jewish family. To guarantee his education, in 1936 his parents send him to London. After his A-levels, John and a short apprenticeship emigrated to the US and worked after 1944 for the OSS (now the CIA) during the Second World War as an under-cover agent in German-occupied France and witnessed the liberation of the Nazi concentration camp Dachau.

Weitz's reputation as a men's fashion designer had the name recognition of today's Gucci or Ralph Lauren labels. Nevertheless, even at the height of his career, he kept his aesthetic and critical distance from pop icons like Andy Warhol, the super-rich from Florida, or the hippie trends from the West Coast. Reading his novel today proves how clearly Weitz understood the superficiality of fast fashion.

Reading his book one can see how, over sixty years ago, Weitz recognized already the crisis of fast fashion. He brilliantly articulates the mixture of media, pseudo-excited style hype, hypocrisy, and monied aristocracy forming the background of the “nothingness” of the New York fashion world. Nevertheless, anyone who’s interested in understanding fashion trends, the manner in which fashion shapes society and the culture of the time cannot avoid his novel.

By John Weitz ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Value of Nothing as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Here is the world of haute couture, racing cars, Seventh Avenue, Palm Beach, Sebring, New York, where the Beautiful People - and their vultures and hangers-on - pretend to live. It is a world where young Philip Ross, through a sexual arrangement that provides him with his first break, crawls onto the lowest rung of the fashion ladder and begins the great climb, over backs and bodies, from couturier's assistant to nationwide fame as an avant-garde American designer.


Explore my book 😀

Ehrenfried and Cohn: Goodbye, Berlin - The Last Fashion Show

By Uwe Westphal ,

Book cover of Ehrenfried and Cohn: Goodbye, Berlin - The Last Fashion Show

What is my book about?

Many years ago, I started to ask questions about the Nazi regime and its impact on the fashion industry in Berlin. I discovered there were about 90,000 employees in 2,700 Jewish fashion firms. All of these Jewish fashion companies were closed or confiscated. How did the state-run theft happen and how did the Nazis do it?

I advertised in England, the US, and France for eyewitnesses and I received many – often handwritten letters from former Berlin Jewish fashion designers or seamstresses. I condensed many of these reports into one fictional fashion firm, run by Kurt Ehrenfried and Simon Cohn. Ehrenfried & Cohn not only lose their property, their success, and their homes, they are forced to leave Berlin, the city of their success. After the war, Kurt Ehrenfried and designer Simon Cohn return from exile back to Berlin with the intention of reclaiming what had been so viciously stolen from them.

Book cover of The Ten: The Stories Behind the Fashion Chassis
Book cover of Sleeping with the Enemy: Coco Chanel's Secret War
Book cover of Blood & Banquets: A Berlin Social Diary

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