Who Owns Chanel? How the Secretive Wertheimer Household Turned Luxurious Titans

Chanel is among the world’s best-known luxurious labels, however the household that owns the $20 billion model stays shrouded in thriller.

Brothers Alain and Gérard Wertheimer are not often photographed. You’re extra prone to discover the billionaires on a horseracing observe than at a style occasion, however once they do attend Chanel reveals, they dangle again within the third or fourth row.

Nonetheless, their household’s future has been intertwined with the world’s second-largest luxurious model for a century, together with some dramatic episodes that had been the main target of the current Apple TV+ sequence “The New Look.”

All of it started in 1924, the yr the Société des Parfums Chanel was created. In enterprise since 1910, Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel was on the lookout for companions to develop her burgeoning perfume enterprise, fueled by the success of her No.5 perfume, launched three years earlier. 

Théophile Bader, cofounder of the Galeries Lafayette division retailer, is claimed to have launched her to Paul and Pierre Wertheimer on the racetrack in Deauville, France, the place Chanel opened her first boutique in 1912, quickly gaining a following for her sportswear line product of jersey, a revolutionary materials that had beforehand been used for males’s underwear.

Their father Ernest Wertheimer had invested in cosmetics-maker Bourjois within the late nineteenth century, and so they had the logistical firepower to provide and distribute Chanel fragrances and sweetness merchandise worldwide. The Wertheimers and Baders had been each Jewish households from the Alsace area of japanese France, and shared sturdy cultural and linguistic bonds.

Underneath the phrases of their partnership, the Wertheimers owned 70 % of the corporate, whereas representatives of Bader held 20 %, and Chanel herself 10 %. That distribution would quickly result in battle. As early as 1928, Chanel would contest the phrases of the deal, launching a barrage of authorized procedures.

Issues got here to a head throughout World Conflict II. The outbreak of warfare pressured the Wertheimers to flee France for New York Metropolis, whereas Chanel closed down her couture home, leaving solely a fragrance boutique open.

In an effort to defend their belongings from Nazi looting, the Wertheimers sealed an settlement with French industrialist and plane constructor Félix Amiot, below which he would quickly take possession of their companies.

Throughout this time, Chanel, who was having an affair with Nazi officer Hans Günther von Dincklage, tried to reclaim her fragrance enterprise from the Wertheimer household below Occupation-era legal guidelines that prohibited Jews from proudly owning firms in France, a course of then known as “Aryanization.”

It’s this era that was the main target of the current sequence “The New Look,” which detailed the wartime actions of Christian Dior, performed by Ben Mendelsohn, and Coco Chanel, portrayed by Juliette Binoche.

Throughout this time, the Wertheimers continued to provide No.5 fragrance at a manufacturing facility in New Jersey, additional fanning the designer’s ire. However Chanel’s makes an attempt to oust them from the corporate failed and Amiot restituted possession of each Chanel and Bourjois to the Wertheimers after the top of the warfare.

Following the loss of life of Paul Wertheimer in 1948, Pierre bought his brother’s shares within the firm. Eager to place previous disagreements behind them and to proceed rising the enterprise, he negotiated a revised partnership settlement with Coco Chanel.

In 1954, he would additionally purchase again the 20 % held by Bader’s associates. In a transfer that rejected some observers, who had written off the disgraced designer after the warfare, he additionally acquired full possession of her couture home and helped orchestrate her comeback after years of exile in Switzerland.

It proved to be a savvy determination, as within the subsequent three years, she would go on to create the quilted purse, tweed swimsuit and two-toned pumps, model signatures that might survive her for greater than half a century and proceed to thrive right now.

A generational handover would quickly sign one other interval of transition for the home.

Pierre Wertheimer handed away in 1965, leaving his son Jacques in cost. The daddy of two boys, Alain and Gérard, Jacques was divorced from their mom, Eliane Fischer. An novice of portray, images and antiques, he amassed an necessary assortment of artwork together with works by the likes of Nicolas de Staël, Bernard Buffet and Joseph Cornell.

Whereas Jacques Wertheimer lacked his father’s and uncle’s enterprise acumen, his aptitude for design led him to make one key determination: to advertise Jacques Helleu to inventive director.

Helleu would stay within the function for greater than 4 many years, revolutionizing the model’s perfume promoting by hiring photographers like Richard Avedon, Ridley Scott and Jean-Paul Goude to shoot campaigns that includes model ambassadors comparable to Catherine Deneuve, Ali McGraw and Carole Bouquet that despatched gross sales of No.5 hovering.

However the loss of life of the home’s founder in 1971 would forged a harsher highlight of Jacques Wertheimer’s managerial shortcomings. In 1974, the remainder of the household determined to sideline the chief, whose conduct had turn into more and more erratic, placing Alain Wertheimer in cost on the age of simply 25.

Among the many younger inheritor’s advisers on the time was his mom Eliane, who had one other son, Charles, along with her second husband, Didier Heilbronn. Eliane Heilbronn subsequently cofounded Salans Hertzfeld & Heilbronn, which grew to become Chanel’s long-term personal legislation agency.

Amongst Alain Wertheimer’s key strikes was to streamline distribution of Chanel’s fragrances and introduce a ready-to-wear assortment. The appointment of Karl Lagerfeld as artistic director in 1983 heralded a brand new interval of progress for the model, making its interlocking-C emblem among the many world’s most fascinating luxurious logos.

Following their father’s loss of life in 1996, Alain and Gérard Wertheimer had been formally named co-owners of Chanel, propelling them into the league of France’s wealthiest individuals.

They ranked third among the many nation’s high 500 fortunes within the newest rating printed by French journal Challenges, with a fortune estimated at 115 billion euros, up 15 % versus the earlier yr.

Now aged 75 and 73, respectively, they share tasks, with New York-based Alain Wertheimer holding the title of worldwide govt chairman of Chanel, whereas Gérard Wertheimer, who lives in Switzerland, is a member of Chanel’s management group.

In the meantime, their half-brother Charles Heilbronn runs the household workplace Mousse Companions, whose operations are characteristically opaque. It’s the funding division of Mousse Investments Restricted, previously Litor Ltd., a Cayman Islands-based holding firm for Chanel and its subsidiaries.

Chanel owns or has majority stakes in firms together with swimwear manufacturers Eres and Orlebar Brown; cashmere specialist Barrie; milliner Maison Michel; silversmith Goossens, and a gaggle of vineyards consisting of Château Canon, Château Rauzan-Segla, Domaine de l’Ile and St. Supéry. Chanel bought Bourjois to Coty Inc. in 2015 in an all-share deal.

The brothers additionally collectively run Wertheimer et Frère, the household’s century-old racing secure and breeding operation. Final yr, they bought the Wildenstein household’s Dayton Investments bloodstock, bringing collectively two of France’s most celebrated entities. Most printed images of the siblings present them on the racetrack.

In all different respects, they’re the polar opposites of French luxurious magnates comparable to Bernard Arnault, the chairman and chief govt officer of LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, who periodically tops the listing of the world’s richest males, or François-Henri Pinault, chairman and CEO of Kering, who’s married to actress Salma Hayek.

The Wertheimers are nearly pathologically personal, dwelling a life that’s the embodiment of quiet luxurious.

“We’re a really discreet household, we by no means speak,” Gérard Wertheimer was quoted as telling the New York Occasions in 2002. “It’s about Coco Chanel. It’s about Karl. It’s about everybody who works and creates at Chanel. It’s not in regards to the Wertheimers.”

However after transferring the corporate’s headquarters to London in 2017, they’ve began to shed some mild on the scope of the model.

In 2018, the personal firm printed consolidated monetary outcomes for the primary time in its historical past, and in 2022, former Unilever govt Leena Nair took over as international CEO from Alain Wertheimer, setting in movement a wide-ranging reshuffle of its high govt ranks.

“All these adjustments have been ready, deliberate and accomplished thoughtfully, as we do all the pieces at Chanel,” she advised WWD in Might.

Coming within the wake of Lagerfeld’s loss of life in 2019, the strikes have stoked hypothesis that the Wertheimers need to promote or listing the corporate, which its administration has constantly denied.

Revenues totaled $19.7 billion in 2023, up 16 % at comparable charges, whereas working revenue rose 11 % to $6.4 billion, in accordance with the latest figures printed by the style home. Nair underscored that Chanel has greater than doubled its revenues and headcount within the final decade, and now employs 36,500 individuals. 

Regardless of the altering of the guard, the Wertheimers are nonetheless very a lot in cost. They had been behind the sudden departure in June of Virginie Viard, Lagerfeld’s right-hand lady, who had succeeded him as artistic director. The seek for its subsequent designer has the style sector on tenterhooks.

They’re now stated to be absolutely centered on planning their succession, with all eyes on the following era of Wertheimers. Gérard Wertheimer has two youngsters, Olivia and David, whereas Alain Wertheimer is father to Sarah, Nathaniel and Raphaël. Charles Heilbronn additionally has three youngsters: Arthur, Charlotte and Louis.

Of this group, solely Nathaniel Wertheimer has joined Chanel, making him the present frontrunner to finally take over the household enterprise. His cousin and fellow Harvard Enterprise College graduate, Arthur Heilbronn, is working alongside his father at Mousse Companions.

Will they proceed the household’s custom of operating Chanel from the shadows? Let the betting start.