A juicy new book about the life of Coco Chanel comes out this year with its publisher, Penguin Books, describing it as “the truth about Chanel’s drug habit and lesbian affairs”. Its author, Lisa Chaney, has certainly done her homework, drawing on recently discovered love letters, and other never before seen records of intimate details of the designer’s life. Chaney chronicles the darker biosphere of the Coco Chanel story, baring the truth back to the bone, where previous biographies have failed to go.

The book reveals in detail how the woman who has previously been painted as a homophobic fashion matriarch was up to more than her publicist would have us believe. The book includes the juicy details of her lesbian affairs, how she maintained her opiate addiction, the Nazi spy romance and even confirms her affair with Surrealist artist Salvador Dali. According to Audrey Tautou, whose movie “Coco Avant Chanel”, from 2009, first spilled the beans on the famous designer, “She was a liar, so it’s difficult to know who she was before she became famous and had some success.” Only Chanel herself can tell us the real truth.