Meet the Wertheimers, the secretive brothers behind Chanel: known as fashions quietest billion
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Doing business with Coco Chanel
Today Alain, 74, and his younger brother Gerard, 71, both have fortunes worth US$46.9 billion, according to Bloomberg.
Their wealth stems from the fact that in 1925, their grandfather Pierre Wertheimer and his brother Paul struck a deal with Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel, who was already famous for her successful fashion business.Together they founded Société des Parfums Chanel with the aim of selling and producing Chanel beauty products. Chanel herself saw it as an opportunity to get her signature fragrance, Chanel No. 5, into the hands of more customers.
Prior to then, the fragrance had only been available to exclusive clientele at Chanel’s Paris boutiques. Today, Chanel perfumes and fashion are available worldwide, and are among the most recognisable of all brands.
Coco Chanel’s Nazi leanings
Chanel was a known Nazi sympathiser who dated a Gestapo spy and appears to have worked as an informant during World War II, though she was never charged, according to PBS.
In 1941, Chanel tried to legally wrest control of the company from Pierre Wertheimer. The Wertheimers were Jewish and at that time owned over 50 per cent of the fashion house, so Chanel attempted to use a law that banned Jews from owning businesses, according to The Guardian.
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But Chanel was unsuccessful, as the Wertheimers had secretly handed off their stake to a French businessman before fleeing France during the Nazi occupation. In 1954, Pierre Wertheimer took full control of Chanel in exchange for paying all of her bills and taxes from then on until her death, 17 years later, according to Bloomberg.
Succession plan
Pierre died in 1965 and control of the company passed to his son, Jacques. Then, in 1973, at 25 years old, Jacques’ son Alain convinced the board of trustees to let him take over the company, The New York Times reported.
Today, Alain serves as chairman while Gerard heads Chanel’s watch division from his home in Geneva, according to Forbes: the third generation of Wertheimers to run the famous company.
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The New York Times once described the brothers as “fashion’s quietest billionaires”. Gérard told The New York Times Magazine in 2002 that the family prefers being discreet. “It’s about Coco Chanel. It’s about Karl [Lagerfeld]. It’s about everyone who works and creates at Chanel. It’s not about the Wertheimers,” he said at the time.
The ascent of King Karl
In 1983, the Wertheimer brothers appointed Karl Lagerfeld as the artistic director of Chanel’s fashion division.
The New York Times has called Lagerfeld the most “prolific designer” of the 20th and 21st centuries. He spent three decades overseeing design for Chanel, revolutionising the brand and saving it from potential financial collapse.
“When I took on Chanel, it was a sleeping beauty. Not even a beautiful one. She snored,” Lagerfeld said in the 2007 documentary Lagerfeld Confidential. “So I was to revive a dead woman.”
Lagerfeld died in February 2019, and a tribute was held in Paris that June to remember the fashion icon. Everyone from Tilda Swinton to Cara Delevingne, Helen Mirren and Pharrell Williams were in attendance, Vogue reported at the time.
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Staying on the down low
Even as Chanel regained its prominence in the fashion world and the Wertheimers’ fortunes grew, they remained low-key and press-shy.
Amusingly, according to The New York Times Magazine, if they attend a Chanel fashion show, they drive themselves, and then sit in the third or fourth row.
The brothers never attend the openings of Chanel stores, nor do they publicly comment on the business. And before 2018, Chanel never even announced sales numbers, leaving the industry to merely guess its worth. When the company did finally release financials for the first time in 108 years, it reported total sales for the 2017 calendar year of US$9.62 billion.
Alain and Gérard haven’t shared publicly who will take over Chanel and whether it will stay in the family’s control, though they are both married with three and two children, respectively, according to Bloomberg.
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Horse racing runs in the family
Like the Wertheimer generations that preceded them, the brothers are heavily involved in horse racing.
Their grandfather, Pierre, bred and raced thoroughbreds – in fact, it was at the races where Coco Chanel and Pierre first met. According to The New York Times, the brothers inherited Wertheimer et Frère, the family’s horse racing and breeding business. Today, Gérard Wertheimer oversees the family’s horse stock.
In 1995, it was estimated that the family owned close to 200 horses across its stud farm in Normandy, France, and its stables in Chantilly, and in California and Kentucky in the US.
Wertheimer horses have won the Breeders’ Cup in the US four times. In 2015, their horse Solow won the Queen Elizabeth II Stakes with the queen herself presenting them with the trophy, as reported in Bloodhorse.7 of Kate Middleton and Princess Charlotte’s top twinning fashion moments
Growing interests in wine
In 1994, the brothers bought Bordeaux winery Château Rauzan-Ségla.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Chanel bought the St. Supery winery in California’s Napa Valley the same year, cementing the brothers’ status in the wine industry.
Also in 2015, the brothers finished the renovation of Château Canon, outside Saint-Émilion in Bordeaux. The Wertheimer family and their guests can often be found enjoying the chateau and its grounds in the summer, the publication reports.
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Houses and art
Alain Wertheimer owns a Connecticut country house and a “grand apartment on Fifth Avenue”, according to The New York Times, while Gérard lives in a secluded mansion in the Vandœuvres region of Geneva, Switzerland.
The Wertheimer family also enjoys shooting game at their chateau in France’s Loire Valley and skiing at their chalet in the Swiss Alps, according to the paper. And as of 2002, the brothers owned eight homes around the world.
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that such spectacular homes also contain some pretty impressive art. The Wertheimers’ art collection is said to include pieces by Picasso and Matisse, but they don’t loan any of the pieces out and they don’t allow them to be photographed, according to the The New York Times.
Business is booming
As for Chanel, the fashion house reported over US$15 billion in revenue in 2021, up over 20 per cent compared to 2019. While the company hasn’t released its 2022 financials, in May 2022, WWD reported its CFO as saying it was experiencing double-digit growth at that point.
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Like other luxury-goods companies, Chanel has been focusing its attention on its high-net-worth customers who have remained resilient amid economic upheaval. The brand’s handbags, already a luxury item, rose in price three times over 2021 and 2022, and last year the brand said that it plans to open boutiques specifically geared toward its highest-spending clients.The brothers also have a one per cent stake in Ulta Beauty, a US chain worth US$24 billion, according to Bloomberg.
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