Who Is the Secretive Family That Owns Chanel?

Chanel is one of the world’s best-known luxury labels, but the family that owns the $20 billion brand remains shrouded in mystery.

Brothers Alain and Gérard Wertheimer are rarely photographed. You’re more likely to find the billionaires on a horseracing track than at a fashion event, but when they do attend Chanel shows, they hang back in the third or fourth row.

Still, their family’s destiny has been intertwined with the world’s second-largest luxury brand for a century, including some dramatic episodes that were the focus of the recent Apple TV+ series “The New Look.”

It all began in 1924, the year the Société des Parfums Chanel was created. In business since 1910, Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel was looking for partners to grow her burgeoning fragrance business, fueled by the success of her No.5 fragrance, launched three years earlier. 

Théophile Bader, cofounder of the Galeries Lafayette department store, is said to have introduced her to Paul and Pierre Wertheimer at the racetrack in Deauville, France, where Chanel opened her first boutique in 1912, rapidly gaining a following for her sportswear line made of jersey, a revolutionary material that had previously been used for men’s underwear.

Their father Ernest Wertheimer had invested in cosmetics-maker Bourjois in the late 19th century, and they had the logistical firepower to produce and distribute Chanel fragrances and beauty products worldwide. The Wertheimers and Baders were both Jewish families from the Alsace region of eastern France, and shared strong cultural and linguistic bonds.

Under the terms of their partnership, the Wertheimers owned 70 percent of the company, while representatives of Bader held 20 percent, and Chanel herself 10 percent. That distribution would soon lead to conflict. As early as 1928, Chanel would contest the terms of the deal, launching a barrage of legal procedures.

Things came to a head during World War II. The outbreak of war forced the Wertheimers to flee France for New York City, while Chanel closed down her couture house, leaving only a perfume boutique open.

In order to protect their assets from Nazi looting, the Wertheimers sealed an agreement with French industrialist and aircraft constructor Félix Amiot, under which he would temporarily take ownership of their businesses.

During this time, Chanel, who was having an affair with Nazi officer Hans Günther von Dincklage, attempted to reclaim her perfume business from the Wertheimer family under Occupation-era laws that prohibited Jews from owning companies in France, a process then referred to as “Aryanization.”

It’s this period that was the focus of the recent series “The New Look,” which detailed the wartime activities of Christian Dior, played by Ben Mendelsohn, and Coco Chanel, portrayed by Juliette Binoche.

During this time, the Wertheimers continued to produce No.5 perfume at a factory in New Jersey, further fanning the designer’s ire. But Chanel’s attempts to oust them from the company failed and Amiot restituted ownership of both Chanel and Bourjois to the Wertheimers after the end of the war.

Following the death of Paul Wertheimer in 1948, Pierre purchased his brother’s shares in the company. Keen to put past disagreements behind them and to continue growing the business, he negotiated a revised partnership agreement with Coco Chanel.

In 1954, he would also buy back the 20 percent held by Bader’s associates. In a move that confounded some observers, who had written off the disgraced designer after the war, he also acquired full ownership of her couture house and helped orchestrate her comeback after years of exile in Switzerland.

It proved to be a savvy decision, as in the next three years, she would go on to create the quilted handbag, tweed suit and two-toned pumps, brand signatures that would survive her for more than half a century and continue to thrive today.

A generational handover would soon signal another period of transition for the house.

Pierre Wertheimer passed away in 1965, leaving his son Jacques in charge. The father of two boys, Alain and Gérard, Jacques was divorced from their mother, Eliane Fischer. An amateur of painting, photography and antiques, he amassed an important collection of art including works by the likes of Nicolas de Staël, Bernard Buffet and Joseph Cornell.

While Jacques Wertheimer lacked his father’s and uncle’s business acumen, his flair for design led him to make one key decision: to promote Jacques Helleu to artistic director.

Helleu would remain in the role for more than four decades, revolutionizing the brand’s fragrance advertising by hiring photographers like Richard Avedon, Ridley Scott and Jean-Paul Goude to shoot campaigns featuring brand ambassadors such as Catherine Deneuve, Ali McGraw and Carole Bouquet that sent sales of No.5 soaring.

But the death of the house’s founder in 1971 would cast a harsher spotlight of Jacques Wertheimer’s managerial shortcomings. In 1974, the rest of the family decided to sideline the executive, whose behavior had become increasingly erratic, putting Alain Wertheimer in charge at the age of just 25.

Among the young heir’s advisers at the time was his mother Eliane, who had another son, Charles, with her second husband, Didier Heilbronn. Eliane Heilbronn subsequently cofounded Salans Hertzfeld & Heilbronn, which became Chanel’s long-term private law firm.

Among Alain Wertheimer’s key moves was to streamline distribution of Chanel’s fragrances and introduce a ready-to-wear collection. The appointment of Karl Lagerfeld as creative director in 1983 heralded a new period of growth for the brand, making its interlocking-C logo among the world’s most desirable luxury logos.

Following their father’s death in 1996, Alain and Gérard Wertheimer were officially named co-owners of Chanel, propelling them into the league of France’s wealthiest people.

They ranked third among the country’s top 500 fortunes in the latest ranking published by French magazine Challenges, with a fortune estimated at 115 billion euros, up 15 percent versus the previous year.

Now aged 75 and 73, respectively, they share responsibilities, with New York-based Alain Wertheimer holding the title of global executive chairman of Chanel, while Gérard Wertheimer, who lives in Switzerland, is a member of Chanel’s leadership team.

Meanwhile, their half-brother Charles Heilbronn runs the family office Mousse Partners, whose operations are characteristically opaque. It’s the investment division of Mousse Investments Limited, formerly Litor Ltd., a Cayman Islands-based holding company for Chanel and its subsidiaries.

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

The brothers also jointly run Wertheimer et Frère, the family’s century-old racing stable and breeding operation. Last year, they purchased the Wildenstein family’s Dayton Investments bloodstock, bringing together two of France’s most celebrated entities. Most published photographs of the siblings show them at the racetrack.

In all other respects, they are the polar opposites of French luxury magnates such as Bernard Arnault, the chairman and chief executive officer of LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, who periodically tops the list of the world’s richest men, or François-Henri Pinault, chairman and CEO of Kering, who is married to actress Salma Hayek.

The Wertheimers are almost pathologically private, living a life that is the embodiment of quiet luxury.

“We’re a very discreet family, we never talk,” Gérard Wertheimer was quoted as telling the New York Times in 2002. “It’s about Coco Chanel. It’s about Karl. It’s about everyone who works and creates at Chanel. It’s not about the Wertheimers.”

But after transferring the company’s headquarters to London in 2017, they have started to shed some light on the scope of the brand.

In 2018, the private company published consolidated financial results for the first time in its history, and in 2022, former Unilever executive Leena Nair took over as global CEO from Alain Wertheimer, setting in motion a wide-ranging reshuffle of its top executive ranks.

“All these changes have been prepared, planned and done thoughtfully, as we do everything at Chanel,” she told WWD in May.

Coming in the wake of Lagerfeld’s death in 2019, the moves have stoked speculation that the Wertheimers are looking to sell or list the company, which its management has consistently denied.

Revenues totaled $19.7 billion in 2023, up 16 percent at comparable rates, while operating profit rose 11 percent to $6.4 billion, according to the most recent figures published by the fashion house. Nair underscored that Chanel has more than doubled its revenues and headcount in the last decade, and now employs 36,500 people. 

Despite the changing of the guard, the Wertheimers are still very much in charge. They were behind the sudden departure in June of Virginie Viard, Lagerfeld’s right-hand woman, who had succeeded him as creative director. The search for its next designer has the fashion sector on tenterhooks.

They are now said to be fully focused on planning their succession, with all eyes on the next generation of Wertheimers. Gérard Wertheimer has two children, Olivia and David, while Alain Wertheimer is father to Sarah, Nathaniel and Raphaël. Charles Heilbronn also has three children: Arthur, Charlotte and Louis.

Of this group, only Nathaniel Wertheimer has joined Chanel, making him the current frontrunner to eventually take over the family business. His cousin and fellow Harvard Business School graduate, Arthur Heilbronn, is working alongside his father at Mousse Partners.

Will they continue the family’s tradition of running Chanel from the shadows? Let the betting begin.