Lhe “cat woman” died suddenly on the last day of 2024, in a hospital in Paris. If feline she had only had the obsession to resemble the cats that her ex-husband adored, Jocelyne Wildenstein, born Périsset in Lausanne (she had kept the prestigious last name of her ex), was known to the jet- set as a whimsical personality. At 79 years old, this Swiss by birth had retained a media aura which took her to French television sets and gave her a circle of subscribers on social networks of 1.1 million people.
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A pulmonary embolism, as sudden as it was unexpected, would have taken her away on New Year's Eve while she was in a Parisian palace. Her current companion, Lloyd Klein, would have found her unconscious in her room. However, the recent publication by the deceased of a photo of her, radiant, with her baby daughter in her arms, before any surgery (at least detectable), as well as a video of her and her companion carrying out these recent weeks among the paparazzi to the sound of Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars' song “Die with a Smile” resonates curiously today.
Operations to “keep” your husband
Unlike the character in Jacques Tourneur's film, The FelineJocelyne Wildenstein did not feel like she was a descendant of the feline race. After marrying Alec Wildenstein, a member of a prestigious family of billionaire art dealers, the young starlet with stretched eyes and high cheekbones thought she would satisfy her husband's taste for “exotic cats” by resorting to “cosmetic” surgery. » to reinforce an air of resemblance with those. The young, pretty woman hoped to become “more attractive” and “keep” her husband.
If opinions differ on the way in which the husband accepted his wife's transformations (very badly, according to British media, very well according to the “confidences” of “the cat woman” to Cyril Hanouna on C 8, recently) , the couple, after having had two children in 1979 and 1980, nevertheless ended up divorcing in 1998. A highly publicized divorce which was settled to the financial advantage of Jocelyne Wildenstein. The latter, having surprised her husband in the middle of adultery with a very young woman, obtained enough to support a billionaire's lifestyle (around 107,000 euros per month) and finance her repeated surgical interventions (The Telegraph puts forward the figure of 2 million euros). To support her request for alimony, she also denounced the Wildenstein family's “tax” arrangements, which will cost art dealers and thoroughbred breeders dearly. With prison sentences at stake…
But the financial windfall dried up in 2015 for Jocelyne Wildenstein, leaving the divorcee “ruined”. However, his companion since 2003, the Canadian-born French couturier Lloyd David Klein – creative director at Madame Grès, and twenty-seven years younger than his muse – took over. And, if their long affair was tumultuous, the creative saw his partner with the eyes of love.
“Yes, she's had some small operations, but she hasn't had her face altered to look like a cat. At 17, she looked the same as she does today, she always looked feline…” he said.
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The spectators of C8, during its last visit, were dismayed by the result. “Frankly, what a horror. What did she do, she who was so pretty,” wrote one Internet user, while others, after noticing that “it’s scary,” wondered about the responsibility of doctors. “How can a surgeon agree to do something like that?” » asked one of them.
Details of Jocelyne Wildenstein's funeral have not been communicated.
