Who was Éliane Heilbronn, the mother of the owners of Chanel and great friend of Karl Lagerfeld, who died at 99?

She was an essential face of the label with its two intertwined Cs. This Monday, November 25, the house of Chanel announced the death of Éliane Heilbronn at the age of 99. She was the mother of businessmen Alain and Gérard Wertheimer, current owners of the French fashion house. “Chanel is extremely sad to confirm the death of Madame Éliane Heilbronn. The funeral will take place in family privacy,” the luxury brand said in a press release.

Lawyer close to Karl Lagerfeld

Born in 1925, Éliane Heilbronn is the daughter of Denise and Louis-Raymond Fischer, French architect and resistance fighter. Her relationship with the house of Chanel began in 1947 when she married Jacques Wertheimer, the son of Pierre Wertheimer, then owner with his brother Paul of Chanel perfumes, who then became owners of the entire house of Chanel, in 1954. She divorced in 1952 and remarried lawyer Didier Heilbronn, before resuming law studies in the United States. She became a lawyer in turn and specialized in contract, distribution and intellectual property rights. In 1978, with her partners Jeffrey Hertzfeld and Carl Salans, she founded the Salans Hertzfeld and Heilbronn firm in Paris, which advised her son Alain Wertheimer.

Beyond business, Éliane Heilbronn was also known to be a close friend of Karl Lagerfeld, with whom she shared a taste for Paris culture and gossip. It was she who drafted the couturier's contract in 1982 when he was hired as artistic director of Chanel by Alain Wertheimer. “Do what you want, but if it doesn’t work, I’ll sell!”, she allegedly told Karl Lagerfeld, before he responded: “Write in the contract: “Do what you want”! » A bet that was worth its weight in gold: by taking the helm of Chanel's ready-to-wear and haute couture collections in 1983, the German designer was quickly acclaimed for his boundless creativity, his unfailing modernity and makes, without difficulty, its letters of nobility to the house founded by Gabrielle Chanel. Especially from an economic point of view: in 2018, the brand crossed $11 billion in sales.

Always dressed in Chanel, Éliane Heilbronn established herself as an elegant and discreet figure of the great Wertheimer dynasty which, on September 12 in Paris, invested alongside the Bettencourt family minority stakes in the company The Row, the American brand successful company specializing in luxury ready-to-wear and founded in 2006 by the Olsen sisters.