Jocelyn Wildenstein, the Swiss-born socialite famous for the surgery-enhanced feline features that earned her nicknames in the American press like “Catwoman” and the “Bride of Wildenstein,” has died. Her partner Lloyd Klein told AFP she died of a pulmonary embolism in Paris.
Wildenstein, who sometimes spelled her name “Jocelyne,” was a staple of New York tabloids for much of her adult life, due to her tempestuous love life, drastically changing appearance and the hefty payout she received in her divorce from an art world bigwig (though she eventually claimed she’d gone bankrupt, having depleted her billions).
Wildenstein often downplayed the extent of her cosmetic procedures, claiming the “cat eyes” she was so infamous for were a family trait, or that different hairstyles changed the way she looked. Occasionally, though, she gave a winking tidbit to journalists who, well, needled her about her procedures.
“If you feel good with your imperfections, with your aging, then you should do nothing,” she reportedly told photographer Zed Nelson in 2006. “Otherwise, it’s all about choosing the right doctor.”
A life defined by money, cosmetic surgery and a love of big cats
Jocelyn Périsset (her maiden name) spent her early life in Lausanne, Switzerland. (Her birthday had proved hard to track down, as she gave reporters different dates. Klein told AFP that she died at age 79, while other outlets reported that she was 84 at the time of her death.) As a child, she spent her time swimming in lakes or skiing on nearby mountains. Her father inspired in her an early love of African mammals, she told Interview magazine in 2023.
She traded Lausanne for Paris in her early 20s, dancing at discos and hobnobbing with well-to-do fellow expats, but she held onto that childhood dream of traveling to Africa. She made several trips to the continent before eventually meeting the billionaire art dealer Alec Wildenstein on a Kenyan safari in 1977. Alec told Vanity Fair in 1998 that he’d been asked to kill a lion on a neighbor’s land, and his future wife tagged along. The pair married the following year, and the new Mrs. Wildenstein gained a new residence: Ol Jogi, the massive ranch her husband’s family owned in Kenya — her favorite of several new international homes.
Her love affair with African big cats continued shortly thereafter on a grander scale — as did her much-reported proclivity for exorbitant spending. After inheriting Ol Jogi through marriage, she installed a bulletproof enclosure for two tigers, a fitting addition to a property that reportedly included 200 buildings staffed by over 300 servants. She told Vanity Fair she and her then-husband spent about $1 million a month. For Wildenstein, a couture Chanel gown costing $350,000 was worth the price.
Her most enduring project was her face. Wildenstein underwent extensive cosmetic surgery in her lifetime, starting about a year into her marriage to Alec, though she long denied it. The two first sought “his-and-hers eye-lifts,” as described pithily in a 1998 Vanity Fair feature, but Wildenstein went further. Throughout most of her adult life, the outer corners of Wildenstein’s eyes slanted up towards her temples, resembling the felines she so admired; her skin was pulled so taut and her cheeks sat so high on her face that it was free of wrinkles well into her 70s.
Wildenstein’s marriage had soured by 1998, when she claimed she discovered her husband in bed with another woman. Alec was charged with menacing his wife after she said he pointed a loaded pistol as she walked in on the scene in their New York mansion, which they shared with other members of the Wildenstein family.
After a contentious trial, Alec was ordered to pay Wildenstein $2.5 billion in a divorce settlement — and $100 million each year for 13 years. He later died in 2008.
Wildenstein’s next most public relationship was with Lloyd Klein, a French designer nearly three decades her junior. They met at New York Fashion Week in 2003 and instantly connected over a mutual love of extravagant style, he told People in 2016.
Their relationship, however, was often tumultuous: Wildenstein was arrested twice, in 2016 and 2017, for fighting with her beau at one of their residences in Trump World Tower in New York, and at one point the two took out restraining order against each other. Klein told People that some of their fights were brought on by Wildenstein’s stress about her “financial duress.” Despite her massive divorce settlement in 1999, Wildenstein filed for bankruptcy in 2018. She told British newspaper The Times that she was still “broke” in late 2023.
After years of avoiding the public eye save for her appearances at her beau’s runway presentations, a decision she said she made to keep her two children, born during her marriage to Alec, out of the press, Wildenstein returned to the spotlight in her later life.
Her otherworldly features, which tabloids once snarked over, were celebrated by stylish outlets like Paper and Interview, for which she posed for grand photoshoots. That she maintained her gaudy glamor (and continued unwillingness to cop to plastic surgery) amid her bankruptcy made her a campy icon of sorts, one even imitated in the front row at haute couture fashion week.
And yet, for all the time she spent in Page Six and other tabloids, much of Wildenstein’s life remains a mystery or myth: her true age, the origins of her feline looks, where all her money really went. She’d promised to tell more of her story in an HBO series that she claimed would air in 2023, but the project has yet to materialize. Still, the way Wildenstein looked at it, she didn’t mind if people misunderstood her.
“I have nothing to prove,” she told Paper in 2018. “In the end, I don’t care.”
Source: CNN Style
Stay tuned for the latest news on our radio stations
