Some faces become well-known for the right reasons, such as talent, beauty, or accomplishment, while others become well-known just because everyone is staring at them. Jocelyn Wildenstein was aware that she fell into the second group. She was born Jocelyne Alice Périsset in Lausanne, Switzerland, in 1940. According to most accounts, she was an attractive young woman who was a hunter, a pilot, and someone who exuded a certain level of continental confidence. Only photos and the recollections of those who knew her long before the surgeries started contain that version of her.
It’s hard to say when exactly things started to change, but most reports indicate that it picked up speed when she married billionaire art dealer Alec Wildenstein, who, according to those close to him, had an almost romantic bond with wild cats. He kept them on his Kenyan ranch, Ol Jogi, where they first met in 1977 during a shooting weekend that sounds like the beginning of a very specific kind of novel. Adnan Khashoggi, a Saudi arms dealer, introduced the two. The next spring, Périsset and Wildenstein fled to Las Vegas. After that weekend, she changed from who she was before.
By all accounts, the surgeries Wildenstein underwent during the ensuing decades were drastic. Canthopexy to tilt and lengthen her eyes. Brow lifts and several facelifts. Facial fillers: According to some experts, the exaggerated, nearly sculptural volume her face eventually displayed was created over time by permanent silicone injections. Although that amount has always seemed a little insignificant, estimates place the overall cost at about $4 million. The money was practically incidental. The motivation is more difficult to describe, and that’s where the real complexity lies. For a long time, people who followed her story conjectured that she was changing herself to fit Alec’s obsession, to literally become the creature he thought was most beautiful.
Nearly to the very end, she denied everything. She once declared, “I haven’t had plastic surgery,” to The Sun, a statement that, depending on the journalist’s personality, was either astounding or perplexing. Alec told Vanity Fair, “She was thinking that she could fix her face like a piece of furniture,” according to her ex-husband. “That is not how skin functions. She refused to listen, though. It’s possible that both of them were lying, that he was truly perplexed by what he had witnessed, and that she truly believed what she was saying. Marriages create their own realities, and this one was unlike any other.
The 1999 divorce was not peaceful. In their New York City home, Jocelyn had discovered Alec with a 21-year-old Russian model. According to reports, he pulled a gun on her. He was incarcerated for one night. During the proceedings, the presiding judge was threatened with death. Jocelyn ultimately received a settlement estimated at $2.5 billion, though some rumors put it as high as $3.8 billion, plus $100 million every year for thirteen years. Almost as an aside, the judge ordered that no additional cosmetic surgery could be funded with alimony. It’s unlikely that the injunction had a significant impact.
The tabloids followed this slow unraveling with a mix of cruelty and fascination. In 2018, Wildenstein declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy with no money in her bank account. In 2020, her three Trump Tower apartments were repossessed. She said Alec’s family had stopped making payments years ago and blamed the collapse on issues with the post-divorce trust. The trajectory of the woman who received one of the biggest divorce settlements in history, spending decades watching it vanish, is particularly depressing.
On New Year’s Eve of 2024, she passed away in Paris. At the age of 84, she suffered a pulmonary embolism in a hotel room while her longtime partner Lloyd Klein was close by. By the end, she had evolved into a meme, a cautionary tale, and a kind of cultural shorthand. However, those who came into contact with her in real life frequently gave a different account. A woman who was courteous, intelligent, and subtly sophisticated in the way that true wealth sometimes results was described by former acquaintances. The person was never fully represented by the face that the world made fun of. Seldom is it.
