Wallis Simpson: Style, Scandal, and the Shadow of Power
The Duchess of Windsor in Mainbocher
I created Treasures of the Duchess because I wanted to understand Wallis Simpson beyond the scandal and controversy that have long defined her legacy.
After watching the first season of The Crown, I found myself frustrated by the lack of compelling, in-depth information about her. Around the same time, I noticed how the media constantly compared the current Duchess of Sussex to Wallis, often in ways that felt rooted in the same misogyny and classism that shaped Wallis’s reputation.
But what truly drove me to start this project was a single question: Why so much hate? For centuries, women who married into the British monarchy were granted the title of Her Royal Highness. Yet Wallis, the Duchess of Windsor, was denied this distinction—an unprecedented decision that made it clear she was an outsider in more ways than one. What had she done that was so unforgivable?
This site isn’t about rehabilitating Wallis’s image, nor is it an attempt to ignore the complexities of her life. It’s about exploring her impact on fashion, culture, and society while acknowledging the historical forces that shaped both her actions and the way she has been remembered.
Few women in the 20th century have been as scrutinized—or vilified—as Wallis Simpson. She is blamed for King Edward VIII’s abdication, cast as the woman who lured a king away from his throne.
And yet, every serious biographer has affirmed that Wallis never wanted Edward to abdicate—she never demanded it, nor did she expect to become Queen of England. In fact, she was never truly proposed to; Edward simply announced to the nation that he was going to marry her. How does one say no to a king? Despite this, she remains painted as an ambitious social climber, and perhaps she was. But she is also remembered as a woman whose story is entangled in accusations of fascist sympathies, making her one of history’s most polarizing figures.
Her infamous 1937 visit to Germany, where she and the Duke of Windsor met Adolf Hitler, has fueled speculation for decades. But was she truly a fascist sympathizer, or was she simply a woman navigating the political currents of her time?
The Duke and Duchess of Windsor with Hitler
The 1937 Visit to Germany: Poor Judgment or Political Statement?
There’s no denying that Wallis and Edward’s visit to Nazi Germany in 1937 was a terrible decision. The widely circulated photographs of them meeting Hitler are haunting and have been used as proof of their sympathies. Some historians, such as Andrew Lownie in Traitor King: The Scandalous Exile of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor (2021), argue that Edward remained open to collaborating with the Nazis even as war loomed. Others, like Karina Urbach in Go-Betweens for Hitler (2015), suggest that aristocrats like the Windsors saw themselves as informal diplomats, maintaining relationships with European leaders—even those with dangerous ideologies.
But what about Wallis? Politics was never her driving force—status, influence, and social position were. Her connections to Nazi officials may have had less to do with ideology and more to do with her desire to maintain her place in elite circles. That doesn’t excuse the poor judgment she and Edward displayed, but it does suggest that, like many in her social class, she may not have fully grasped the dangers of the company she kept.
To understand Wallis’s world, we have to acknowledge the widespread antisemitism of the 1930s, not just in Britain but across European high society. Today, we recognize the deep harm caused by such prejudices, but in Wallis’s time, antisemitic attitudes were deeply embedded in the aristocracy, business elite, and even government policy.
Many in Britain’s upper classes saw Hitler as a stabilizing force against communism, long before the full scale of his atrocities became clear. Paris, the epicenter of European fashion and culture, was no exception.
The world of haute couture, particularly in Paris, was shaped by figures whose reputations today are complicated by their wartime actions and associations. Coco Chanel, a contemporary of Wallis and an icon of the fashion world, was revealed in declassified intelligence documents to have worked as a Nazi informant during the German occupation of France. As Hal Vaughan details in *Sleeping with the Enemy: Coco Chanel’s Secret War* (2011), Chanel’s antisemitism was well-documented, and she used Nazi racial laws to attempt to wrest control of her perfume business from her Jewish business partners. This was not an isolated case—many in elite circles saw collaboration with the Nazis as a pragmatic, even desirable, course of action.
Wallis and Edward moved in similar social circles, where these prejudices were often unchallenged and even encouraged. The Duke of Windsor himself made several antisemitic remarks throughout his life, and reports suggest that Wallis shared some of these biases. It’s unsettling, but it was not unique to them—it was a symptom of their privileged world. Acknowledging this context doesn’t excuse it, but it does help explain why they failed to see their actions as controversial at the time.
The Duchess of Windsor in Mainbocher
Understanding this broader environment helps paint a more nuanced picture of Wallis. She was not a lone outlier but part of a deeply flawed elite who, at best, turned a blind eye to the dangers of fascism, and at worst, actively enabled it. The same implicit biases that allowed British aristocrats to admire authoritarian leaders also reinforced the racist structures of colonial rule.
After Edward’s abdication, he was appointed Governor of the Bahamas in 1940—a move designed to keep him far from Britain and his suspected Nazi sympathies. During the Windsors’ time in the Bahamas, Edward upheld an apartheid-like system that kept the Black majority disenfranchised, dismissing calls for equality as communist agitation.
Wallis, immersed in the social privileges of white elite circles, appeared indifferent to the injustices surrounding her. Their attitudes reflected a world where racism was not just tolerated but institutionalized—whether in the British Empire, in Parisian high society, or in the luxury fashion industry, where figures like Coco Chanel actively collaborated with Nazi occupiers. Their story is not just one of personal prejudice but of a privileged class clinging to outdated hierarchies, resisting the forces of change, and failing to recognize—or care about—the deep harm their worldview inflicted on others.
It’s easy to judge historical figures by today’s moral standards, but doing so can oversimplify complex realities. This isn’t to say Wallis shouldn’t be criticized—far from it. But I also think it’s worth asking whether she has been unfairly vilified compared to others of her era.
Wallis Simpson was a woman of contradictions—an American divorcée who disrupted the royal order in a way many never forgave, yet also a product of an aristocratic world with deeply ingrained prejudices. The press painted her as a villain, and her reputation was shaped as much by bias as by her own choices. If she had been British-born, if she had been a man, would history have judged her as harshly? Her legacy is complicated. She was denied the title of *Her Royal Highness*, cast as an outsider, and subjected to a level of vitriol that raises larger questions about power, gender, and class in the British monarchy.
Yet, beyond the scandal and scrutiny, Wallis’s life holds valuable lessons about the intersection of privilege, race, and historical memory.
Studying her story forces us to examine how society constructs narratives of influence, who is condemned or redeemed, and how biases shape public perception. She was neither entirely innocent nor entirely villainous—she was ambitious, privileged, and at times willfully ignorant of the forces at play around her. Understanding figures like Wallis isn’t about excusing or glorifying them but about interrogating the world that created them. History is rarely black and white, and Wallis’s story is no exception. Instead of reducing her to a scandal, I want to understand her as she really was—a woman navigating a world that was changing in ways few could yet comprehend.
