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Jocelyn Wildenstein, the Swiss socialite nicknamed “Catwoman” because of her intense, animal-esque plastic surgery, has died at age 84.
According to her partner Lloyd Klein, Wildenstein, born Jocelyne Périsset, died on New Year’s Eve in Paris. The couturier confirmed her cause of death was pulmonary embolism in a statement sent to People. The celebrity had been diagnosed with phlebitis, the inflammation of a vein in the leg, which is what led to the artery blockage in her lungs.
“Because of her phlebitis, the legs were very, very swollen, and the blood was blocked, and there was no oxygen in the brain,” Klein told the outlet, explaining how he and Wildenstein had planned to take a nap before going out on December 31.
“When I wake up, I said, ‘Jocelyn, we have to wake up, we have to get dressed,’ and she was cold and she was dead,” he continued.
Wildenstein’s death came as a massive shock to Klein, who’d known her for over 21 years. “We were at the Ritz two days ago. We were having dinner. Before that, we had come for Fashion Week at Chanel. Everything was good, everything was good,” he noted.
It wasn’t just Wildenstein’s feline-like appearance that intrigued the masses throughout her adult life. The self-proclaimed art dealer was also highly-regarded for her hefty divorce settlement of $2.5 billion, which she reportedly blew through, leaving her living paycheck to paycheck in the last few months of her life.
In 1978, she married her first and only husband, Alec Wildenstein, a famous French art dealer who died from prostate cancer in 2008. The two were together for 21 years before they officially parted ways after their two-year divorce proceeding that spurred a wild media circus.
According to Reuters, the Lausanne-born woman had been promised an additional $100 million on top of her $2.5 billion for the next 13 years. However, Wildenstein claimed she had been cut off from her ex-husband’s family in 2015 even though Alec had inherited $10 billion from his father’s estate in 2002.
In 2023, Wildenstein spoke to The Times of London, alleging she hadn’t received a dime of her settlement money in eight years. What’s more, she told the outlet she had zero income.
Wildenstein said her trust that was set up in the divorce settlement was also the cause of her money issues. In an interview with the New York Post, she said the trust was meant to be secured by lucrative artwork, which were later characterized as forgeries by her bankruptcy lawyer, Douglas Pick.
In 2018, she filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, listing her checking account balance as $0, her debt as $6.4 million, and the total worth of her assets as $16.4 million.
Wildenstein never confirmed her penchant for plastic surgery. In fact, she denied the rumors that had long followed her during a discussion with the Daily Mail TV in 2018.
When asked if she’d ever been under the knife, Wildenstein said: “No, especially when we look back at my pictures — I think of course I am maybe more beautiful.
“When we are young there’s a certain freshness we lose with the years. But you still find the same eyes, same high cheeks, or same nose. I think I was more pretty.”
It was thought by many that her ex-husband had inspired the first of her cosmetic surgeries. Yet, he refuted the speculation in a 1998 Vanity Fair article where he claimed that his wife “was thinking that she could fix her face like a piece of furniture.”
“Skin does not work that way. But she wouldn’t listen,” he continued.
