PARIS — Eliane Heilbronn, the matriarch of the household that owns Chanel, has died on the age of 99.
Her demise was confirmed by Chanel in an announcement on Sunday.
“Chanel is deeply saddened to verify the passing of Madame Eliane Heilbronn. The funeral can be held privately,” it stated.
Heilbronn is finest identified for her profession in legislation, which noticed her draft the contract of Karl Lagerfeld when he was employed as inventive director of Chanel in 1982.
Born in 1925 to Denise and Louis-Raymond Fischer, an architect who later took half within the French Resistance, Eliane Fischer grew up in Paris. Her mother and father divorced in 1939.
When Germany invaded France the next yr, she and her youthful brother Robert first discovered refuge within the South of France with their mom, who had remarried, earlier than heading to Mexico Metropolis, the place their new stepfather Marcel Bloch, a businessmann, had grown up and nonetheless had household ties.
As soon as World Warfare II was over, Eliane Fischer, as she was then identified, returned to France to pursue a college training with a watch towards legislation.
In 1947, she married Jacques Wertheimer, the son of Bourjois and Chanel co-owner Pierre Wertheimer. The couple welcomed sons Alain in 1948 and Gérard in 1951.
Following her 1952 divorce, she married Didier Heilbronn, a lawyer. The couple had a son, Charles Heilbronn, who’s now the pinnacle of the household workplace Mousse Companions. The household moved to New York Metropolis the place her husband joined the Louis-Dreyfus service provider agency.
Then in her 30s, Eliane Heilbronn enrolled within the New York Regulation Faculty and graduated in 1958 with a grasp of legislation. After returning to Paris, she joined the newly minted legislation agency of Samuel Pisar in 1962.
When her former husband Jacques Wertheimer was sidelined from Chanel in 1974, leaving her eldest son Alain in cost on the age of simply 25, Heilbronn grew to become one in every of his key advisers. The identical yr, she was sworn in as a member of the Paris bar.
The lawyer would subsequently cofound Salans Hertzfeld & Heilbronn, now generally known as Dentons, which grew to become Chanel’s long-term non-public legislation agency. Over the many years, she drafted the contract of the French firm’s high executives.
A chic but discreet determine, she was lively effectively into her later years, going to her workplace within the tony eighth arrondissement till the COVID-19 pandemic, in accordance with French media. On the legislation agency’s web site, she nonetheless held the place of senior counsel, with a specialty in contract legislation in addition to distribution and mental property legislation.
Heilbronn is survived by her three sons and eight grandchildren.
– With contributions from Joelle Diderich
