Models always know their best angles and how to use them but what happens offstage when the lights dim? SPYSCAPE introduces five of the world’s most glamorous spies.
Toto Koopman modeled for Chanel, Mainbocher and Madeleine Vionnet
Catharina ‘Toto’ Koopman
Catharina ‘Toto’ Koopman (1908-1991) was the spy who wore Schiaparelli. Born in Indonesia, she was an exotic Dutch-Javanese model working in Paris before the start of WWII. While she gained fame as a bi-racial and openly bisexual Chanel model, her private life was equally as intriguing as a spy for the Italian Resistance.
She infiltrated meetings of the Black Shirts but was captured in January 1941, escaped twice, and was later arrested in Venice for spying on high-ranking German officers at the Danieli Hotel. Toto was sent to Germany’s Ravensbrück prison, and claimed to be a London-trained nurse who happened to speak impeccable German. She was assigned to a medical team, quite possibly saving her life.
After the war, she met art dealer Erica Brausen who persuaded a wealthy American, to back her in the Hanover Gallery. It became one of the most influential galleries in Europe in the 1950s.
Aline Griffith thrilled readers with tales of intrigue
Aline Griffith
American model Aline Griffith (1920-2017) was 23 when she arrived in Madrid as an Office of Strategic Services spy in early 1944. Neutral Spain was swarming with intelligence agents and Griffith - poised, confident, and looking for adventure - was skilled in lock picking, safecracking, and hand-to-hand combat.
By day, Griffith worked under non-diplomatic cover as a code clerk for the American Oil Control Commission. By night, she circulated in Spain’s high society gathering intelligence about the Nazis. Griffith - who would later marry and become the Countess of Romanones - was described by Time as living a life of glamor and danger akin to Ingrid Bergman in the Hitchcock spy thriller Notorious.
In her memoirs, Griffith recalled being abducted as she left a Madrid country club dinner one evening with high-ranking Nazis. Apparently, she shot one of the kidnappers who turned out to be a double agent. Some question whether her adventures were real or imagined, but all agree her tales were entertaining.
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Models always know their best angles and how to use them but what happens offstage when the lights dim? SPYSCAPE introduces five of the world’s most glamorous spies.
Toto Koopman modeled for Chanel, Mainbocher and Madeleine Vionnet
Catharina ‘Toto’ Koopman
Catharina ‘Toto’ Koopman (1908-1991) was the spy who wore Schiaparelli. Born in Indonesia, she was an exotic Dutch-Javanese model working in Paris before the start of WWII. While she gained fame as a bi-racial and openly bisexual Chanel model, her private life was equally as intriguing as a spy for the Italian Resistance.
She infiltrated meetings of the Black Shirts but was captured in January 1941, escaped twice, and was later arrested in Venice for spying on high-ranking German officers at the Danieli Hotel. Toto was sent to Germany’s Ravensbrück prison, and claimed to be a London-trained nurse who happened to speak impeccable German. She was assigned to a medical team, quite possibly saving her life.
After the war, she met art dealer Erica Brausen who persuaded a wealthy American, to back her in the Hanover Gallery. It became one of the most influential galleries in Europe in the 1950s.
Aline Griffith thrilled readers with tales of intrigue
Aline Griffith
American model Aline Griffith (1920-2017) was 23 when she arrived in Madrid as an Office of Strategic Services spy in early 1944. Neutral Spain was swarming with intelligence agents and Griffith - poised, confident, and looking for adventure - was skilled in lock picking, safecracking, and hand-to-hand combat.
By day, Griffith worked under non-diplomatic cover as a code clerk for the American Oil Control Commission. By night, she circulated in Spain’s high society gathering intelligence about the Nazis. Griffith - who would later marry and become the Countess of Romanones - was described by Time as living a life of glamor and danger akin to Ingrid Bergman in the Hitchcock spy thriller Notorious.
In her memoirs, Griffith recalled being abducted as she left a Madrid country club dinner one evening with high-ranking Nazis. Apparently, she shot one of the kidnappers who turned out to be a double agent. Some question whether her adventures were real or imagined, but all agree her tales were entertaining.
Anna Chapman is a Russian spy-turned-model and TV presenter
Anna Chapman
When Russian spy Anna Chapman (born in 1982) moved to Manhattan in 2009, she told people she was a realtor. An FBI investigation revealed otherwise, however. Chapman was actually a Moscow sleeper agent, part of a larger network operating in the US that later inspired the US series The Americans.
Chapman and nine others pleaded guilty to working as unlawful Russian agents and were part of a 2010 spy swap in Vienna. Chapman’s Instagram account lists her work as a ‘model’ and host of the Chapman Secrets TV program.
Jean Dawnay
British fashion model Jean Mary Dawnay (1925 - 2016) - later Princess George Galitzine - modeled for Christian Dior in addition to being a stage and film actress. What is less known about her incredible career is that Dawnay was also a WWII codebreaker.
Her mother died and she was brought up in foster care. She lied about her age to get into Britain’s Women's Auxiliary Air Force in WWII. After a stint in a parachute factory, Dawnay joined a top-secret, all-female espionage unit and was posted to Bletchley Park as a cipher expert. The famous codebreaker Leo Marks described Dawnay as one of his 'very best'.
She later modeled for John French, Richard Dormer, and Cecil Beaton but found stardom posing for Dior. In the '50s, Dawnay married Prince George Galitzine, from one of Imperial Russia’s most noble families, and devoted her later years to acting and charity work.
Gisela Winegard was a German model and spy who studied at Oxford in 1930s
Gisela Winegard
Long before the Profumo Affair, Britain’s Conservative MP and War Minister John Profumo had a long-term affair with fashion model Gisela Klein (later Winegard), a Nazi spy in Paris.
Winegard - who later married her American WWII jailer, Edward Winegard - began her decades-long relationship with Profumo during their university days at Oxford in 1933. Profumo continued writing love letters to the Nazi spy on Britain’s House of Commons notepaper, according to MI5 and MI6 archives, which caused her to briefly separate from her husband in 1950.
Winegard was serving time in prison for espionage when she met Edward, at the time serving in the US Army. Profumo, meanwhile, resigned from the Cabinet in 1963 after revelations about his relationship with another model, Christine Keeler, who was also sleeping with a Russian spy.
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