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Jocelyn WildensteinSwiss socialite nicknamed “Catwoman” for her intense, animalistic style plastic surgeryhe died at the age of 84.
According to her partner Lloyd Klein, Wildenstein, born Jocelyne Périsset, died on New Year’s Day in Paris. Couturier confirmed the cause of her death as a pulmonary embolism in a statement People. Slavna was diagnosed with phlebitis, an inflammation of the veins in her leg, which led to the blockage of an artery in her lungs.
“Because of her phlebitis, her legs were very, very swollen, the blood was blocked, and there was no oxygen to the brain,” Klein told the outlet, explaining how he and Wildenstein planned to take a nap before going out. December 31.
“When I woke up, I said, ‘Jocelyn, we have to wake up, we have to get dressed,’ and she was cold and dead,” he continued.
Wildenstein’s death came as a shock to Klein, who had known her for more than 21 years. “We were at the Ritz two days ago. We had dinner. Before that, we came to Fashion Week at Chanel. Everything was good, everything was good,” he said.
It wasn’t just Wildenstein’s feline looks that intrigued the masses throughout her adult life. The self-proclaimed art dealer was also highly regarded for her hefty $2.5 billion divorce settlement, which she reportedly pocketed, leaving her paycheck to paycheck in the last few months of her life.
In 1978, she married her first and only husband, Alec Wildenstein, a well-known French art dealer who died of prostate cancer in 2008. The two were together for 21 years before officially separating after two years of divorce proceedings that fueled a media frenzy circus.
According to Reuters, the Lausanne-born woman was promised an additional $100 million on top of her $2.5 billion over the next 13 years. However, Wildenstein claimed she was cut off from her ex-husband’s family in 2015, even though Alec inherited $10 billion from his father’s estate in 2002.
In 2023, Wildenstein spoke with The Times of Londonstating that she had not received a dime of her settlement money for eight years. Moreover, she told the agency that she had zero income.
Wildenstein said her trust established in the divorce settlement was also the cause of her money problems. In an interview with New York Postshe said the trust was supposed to be backed by lucrative artwork, which her bankruptcy attorney Douglas Peake later characterized as a forgery.
In 2018, she filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, listing her checking account balance as $0, her debt as $6.4 million, and the total value of her assets as $16.4 million.
Wildenstein has never confirmed his penchant for plastic surgery. In fact, she denied the rumors that followed her for a long time during the conversation with Daily Mail TV in 2018
When asked if she had ever been under the knife, Wildenstein said: “No, especially when we look at my pictures – I think, of course, I’m maybe prettier.
“When we are young, there is a certain freshness that we lose with age. But you still find the same eyes, the same high cheeks or the same nose. I think I was prettier.”
Many thought that her ex-husband inspired the first of her cosmetic surgeries. However, he dismissed those speculations in 1998 Vanity Fair article in which he claimed his wife “thought she could fix her face like a piece of furniture.”
“Skin doesn’t work that way. But she didn’t want to listen,” he continued.