The word “unrecognisable” is often bandied about when it comes to celebrity makeovers. But scarcely has it been more apt than in the case of the late Jocelyn Wildenstein, who died this week.
With high cheekbones, wide eyes, and a button nose, Jocelyne Périsset cut a glamorous figure as a young Swiss socialite on the rise in 1955, aged 15, in one of the earliest images released of her. By the time of death on December 31 2024, however, that face had been replaced with the one she will be remembered for – thick lips, swollen cheeks, a wide nose and elongated, cat-like eyes.
Périsset realised if she was to join the global jet set, being flexible about her identity would help. Training as a big game hunter and pilot went a long way in putting her relatively humble Lausanne upbringing (as the daughter of a sports shop owner and housewife) behind her. In 1978, the then 38-year-old’s efforts bore maximum fruit: she eloped with French art dealer and safari lover Alec Wildenstein, heir to a $10bn fortune.
The couple had been married a year when Wildenstein commented to her new husband that his eyes looked “baggy”. They booked eye-lifts. It was the start of her “addiction”.
A young Jocelyn Wildenstein cut a glamorous figure
She was becoming hooked at the beginning of plastic surgery’s new dawn. Medical techniques pioneered by Sir Harold Gillies to help fix disfigured soldiers returning from the First World War were, by the 1970s, becoming fashionable.
“Plastic surgery was starting to become mainstream but it would have been an exclusive group of people having it done,” explains British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons president Nora Nugent, before adding that, though the practice exploded in popularity during Wildenstein’s lifetime, things also evolved.
“Around the 1980s we started to better understand facial anatomy,” explains Nugent. “The first facelifts were essentially tightening the skin, but skin is elastic so it stretches out again. Now we understand more of the underlying support tissues underneath the skin which will hold the lift. We also started to realise the best angles to do a facelift: if you pull the skin straight back, you get an unnatural wind tunnel effect where the corner of the mouth is pulled back.”
The best facelifts, thinks Nugent, aren’t obvious. It’s hard to say that of Wildenstein’s.
Jocelyn Wildenstein, who was dubbed ‘the Lion Queen’ among other nicknames, in 2006 – Getty
“She was thinking that she could fix her face like a piece of furniture,” Alec quipped in 1998, while their divorce played out. “Skin does not work that way. But she wouldn’t listen.” As her appearance became more noticeably unusual, Wildenstein was dubbed “Catwoman”, “the Lion Queen” or “the Bride of Wildenstein”.
Friends bemoaned the way she had “mutilated herself”, and speculated she was attempting to look like the big cats that fascinated her husband. “The lynx has perfect eyes,” opined Wildenstein in 1998. (Though she added her looks were natural. “If I show you pictures of my grandmother,” she said, “what you see is these eyes – cat eyes – and high cheekbones.”)
Jocelyn Wildenstein pictured at her Upper East Side townhouse in NYC in 1998 – Getty Images
“Based on pictures it looks like she’s had injections into her face, a face lift, brow lifts, and blapheroplasties [eye-lid lifts],” says Dr Georgina Williams, consultant plastic and reconstructive surgeon and co-founder of Montrose London aesthetic clinics.
Nowadays, facial fillers tend to come in the form of hyaluronic acid. If those fillers move or change shape, aesthetic surgeons can use enzymes to break them down and remove them. Unfortunately, says Williams, that isn’t an option for earlier fillers.
“In the 1980s and 90s people injected silicone, which was a total disaster,” Williams explains. “You’d have granulomas [inflammatory tissue] developing around the silicone. You can’t dissolve that.
“When I have people coming to me having had those procedures, I have to carefully and selectively cut it out,” she continues. “It’s difficult and doesn’t always work. In Wildenstein’s case, I suspect she’s had a reaction in her subcutaneous tissue, and the organic tissue has matted down with the filler. You can’t reverse that.”
“Just looking at photos of her, even when she was younger, she clearly had body dysmorphic disorder.”
Dr Georgina Williams, a consultant plastic and reconstructive surgeon, believes that WIldenstein ‘clearly had body dysmorphic disorder’ – Getty Images
Now there is a growing awareness of this disorder by aesthetic surgeons of the perils of operating on someone who suffers from this kind of psychological disorder. Certainly, more checks happen compared with when Wildenstein first went under the knife.
“Most of us, as part of our consultations, incorporate a psychological assessment of patients,” explains Nugent. “I do a questionnaire where I ask how many hours a day they think about the particular concern they’re seeing me about, whether they think they’re too fat, whether that issue impacts their relationships. If there’s something obvious there an ethical surgeon would refer the patient to a psychologist.”
“The amount of people with body dysmorphia coming for aesthetic surgery is hugely disproportionate to the general population,” adds Williams. “A recent meta-analysis looking at 15,000 patients found 20 per cent suffered from body dysmorphic disorder. That’s compared to one per cent of adults who have the condition.
Alec Wildenstein said that his wife, pictured here in 1997, believed she could ‘fix her face like a piece of furniture’ – Getty Images
“It behoves us to think about what the patient needs. I sometimes gently suggest to patients, after building up some trust with them, that they don’t need more filler but actually could do with having some removed. [But] if someone wants more surgery, there’s no way of stopping them.”
Some did try to put a stop to Wildenstein’s aesthetic obsession. During the couple’s divorce settlement, the judge ordered that Wildenstein was not to use her alimony payments on surgeries. By then, Wildenstein’s face was pulled so taut that she couldn’t blink normally.
In November 2024, Wildenstein denied having surgery.
In November 2024, Wildenstein claimed she had never undergone surgery – Getty
“I am scared of what can happen and I don’t like to have something heavy, sometimes it is a bit heavy and terrible,” she said.
“I have had Botox only twice. I don’t know if I am allergic, but when I had it, it did not go well… my face swelled up.”
Though Wildenstein’s appearance was known around the world, in an age when plastic surgery’s popularity is only increasing, hers is a cautionary tale.
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