If you happen to be in a line of work where publicists send you advance copies of fashion books, you’ve perhaps wondered why you currently have three books about Coco Chanel sitting on your desk, and you’re not alone. The FT’s Vanessa Friedman has finally given voice to our puzzlement: “We all know that publishers and movie studios love a sure thing but this is ridiculous. This is beyond trend. This is well into the range of phenomenon,” she writes, noting that there 25 biographies of Coco in addition to the three this year. “Does this strike anyone else as a little strange? As a subject, maybe, worth investigating (literally, if you consider how much money is being generated by all of the above)? What does Chanel have that no other fashion figure has?”