From Tom Leonard IN THE DOCK, THE BRIDE OF WILDENSTEIN
Millionairess divorcee and plastic surgery junkie accused of scissor attack on her fashion designer boyfriend
SHE earned the nickname ‘Catwoman’ for her alarming looks rather than her behaviour, but tiger comparisons certainly seemed apt yesterday when the New York socialite Jocelyne Wildenstein was accused of clawing and slashing her boyfriend in a raging late-night fight.
Attempting to hide her distinctive, surgically ruined face from photographers after she made a court appearance in Manhattan, the 71-year-old — also known as the Bride of Wildenstein — has been thrust back into the spotlight over alarming allegations that she attacked the fashion designer Lloyd Klein.
And yet nothing was quite so shocking as her grotesque appearance. After decades of compulsive cosmetic surgery which friends say is a misguided attempt to look like a jungle cat, Ms Wildenstein now looks more like a Hollywood monster than the sleek lynx she once kept as a pet.
In court, Ms Wildenstein, who is now rarely seen in public, spent five minutes brushing her hair and looking at her reflection in her mobile phone before a judge heard charges against her of felony assault with intent to cause physical injury with a weapon, and a lesser charge of assault with intent to cause physical injury.
The charges relate to Mr Klein’s claims — supported by photos of him with blood streaming down his scratched face — that his girlfriend of 13 years gouged him with her sharp nails before stabbing him with a pair of scissors.
The Canadian-born, French designer fled their $5 million home in Manhattan’s Trump World Tower after the incident and reportedly insists their relationship is over, as he considers Ms Wildenstein a ‘ticking timebomb’.
A source close to the couple said they had a ‘relaxing’ dinner at home on Tuesday night when Ms Wildenstein — who in 1999 won the biggest settlement in divorce history at over $2 billion — became incensed that he was spending too much time using social media on his computer.
Angry that he wasn’t paying her enough attention, she picked up a lit candle and threw hot wax over him, said the source.
Ignoring his attempts to calm her, she then allegedly raked his face with her nails before grabbing a pair of scissors and stabbing them twice into his chest.
‘Wildenstein is accused of scratching his face with her fingernails and using a pair of scissors to cut him on the upperright part of his chest,’ said a police spokesman. ‘The victim suffered bleeding. However, he refused medical attention at the scene.’
Mr Klein, 49, whose clients include Cindy Crawford and Joan Collins, reportedly told police that he responded by pushing her into a walk-in closet off their hall.
ALTHOUGH he insists he didn’t lock her in, she is understood to have phoned her agent, as well as police and building security, to say she was being held prisoner. When police officers arrived at around 1am, they arrested her rather than him. She has yet to offer a plea.
The Swiss-born Ms Wildenstein has courted plenty of controversy in her colourful life, although until now it had never ended up in Manhattan’s Criminal Court.
Born Jocelyne Perisset in Lausanne to a father who was a financially-struggling buyer for a sports shop, she moved to Paris when she was 20, learning how to hunt and shoot. In those days a very pretty and adventurous blonde, she notched up a string of rich and influential boyfriends, including the Saudi arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi.
While on safari in 1977, she was introduced to the multi-millionaire French businessman Alec Wildenstein by Khashoggi at the Wildenstein family’s lavish, 60,000-acre ranch in Kenya.
The next day she accompanied Mr Wildenstein, whose vast family fortune was built on art dealing, to shoot a lion harassing a neighbouring farm and — thrilled by the chase — the couple exchanged their first kiss the same evening.
She was the sort of young woman who liked to water-ski on the crocodile-infested Zambezi river and Mr Wildenstein admitted he found her ‘exciting’. Both in their 30s, they eloped to Las Vegas to marry the following year.
Mr Wildenstein proved a difficult and unfaithful husband — he was depressed by his overbearing father’s grip on the family business and was the sort of man who, when asked if he had mistresses, cited the fact he was French.
In an attempt to please him, his new wife tried to beautify herself, persuading him after just a year’s marriage to join her in having ‘his-and-hers eyelids’ surgery.
It was the first of many operations. She reportedly spent $4 million on surgical work during the marriage, going for the feline look principally to please her big cat-loving husband.
‘The lynx has perfect eyes,’ she once said, although she later insisted her supposedly cat-like appearance actually ran in the family and was perfectly natural.
Her look — achieved over decades of effort — has been described as a ‘ritual mask that was vaguely African’ and it stretched her skin so tightly the veins could be seen though it and she could barely blink.
However, her husband wasn’t impressed. ‘She was a stunner when we married, but then she began treating her body like our apartments — it was constantly being renovated,’ said Mr Wildenstein. ‘She was crazy. I would always find out last. She was thinking that she could fix her face like a piece of furniture. Skin does not work that way. But she wouldn’t listen.’
Friends say they never saw her when she wasn’t recovering from some new operation, one of them describing Ms Wildenstein as ‘mutilating’ herself.
She also spent lavishly in other ways, overseeing the family’s African estate, Ol Jogi, which included 200 buildings, two swimming pools, 55 artificial lakes and 366 servants.
She installed two tigers — not, of course, native to Africa — which lived in a bullet-proof glass cave near one of the swimming pools. For her daughter Diane’s 17th birthday, the teenager was built a $3 million mansion on the Kenyan estate.
EVERY month, Jocelyne Wildenstein estimated that she and her husband spent $1 million. Her little luxuries for herself included spending $350,000 on a Chanel dress which she designed with Karl Lagerfeld, and $10 million on jewellery.
According to Mr Wildenstein, the couple — who had two children — fought continually, claiming she would ‘fly off the handle’ if he so much as changed his cologne.
Although she insisted they argued no more than any married couple, he said they had little in common apart from their love of Africa.
They were already discussing splitting up when, in 1997, Ms Wildenstein says she found her husband in bed at their Manhattan home with a 21-year-old Russian model. Mr Wildenstein earned himself a night behind bars after he threatened her with a gun,
although he later claimed in court that he had thought his wife’s two bodyguards were burglars.
The ugly, two-year divorce was mortifying for all involved. The Wildensteins — the art world’s richest family — had tried hard to stay out of the public eye amid accusations they made much of their enormous wealth from collaborating with the Nazis.
When Ms Wildenstein demanded a monthly settlement of $200,000 and a $50 million deposit, (claiming her annual food and drink bill alone came to $547,000) Alec Wildenstein feebly pleaded poverty only for it to emerge the family not only had a huge mansion in Manhattan (with swimming pool), but a French chateau, flats in Paris and Switzerland and a private compound in the U.S. Virgin Islands — as well as that ranch in Kenya.
In New York, their many staff included a servant whose sole responsibility was looking after their dogs. Speaking to Vanity Fair, Mr Wildenstein — who died in 2008 — exacted some revenge by accusing his wife of having had a dubious sexual past. (She didn’t quite answer the question when the magazine later put the allegation to her). Ms Wildenstein also faced embarrassment when she admitted she had never learned to boil a kettle and didn’t even know how to switch on the oven in their New York home.
She was eventually awarded a $2.5 billion settlement and a further $100 million every 12 months for the next 13 years.
The judge stipulated she couldn’t use any of the settlement money for further cosmetic surgery and suggested she buy herself a microwave oven. Although it remains unclear if she can cook for herself, she has certainly never lost her passion for face-altering surgery.
At the last count, she is estimated to have undergone at least seven facelifts, together with drastic eye reconstruction surgery, and collagen injections to her lips, cheeks and chin.
Far from being upset by the endless brickbats — even her surgeon reportedly admitted that a potential patient fled his surgery after she saw what had happened to Ms Wildenstein — she is said to be delighted by the way she looks.
As for the rest of us, we are appalled and no doubt a little pitying at the self-deception of the world’s most notorious cosmetic surgery victim.
And every time a picture is published under the heading, ‘Is this the scariest picture ever of Jocelyne Wildenstein?’, it proves to be woefully premature.