What more, at this point, can be said about Chanel? Libraries of books have been written about the brand and the woman who started it all. That’s to say nothing of what has been written about her successor, Karl Lagerfeld, whose legacy looms large over the fashion industry in general and, more specifically, the house that he led for 36 years before his death in 2019.

Despite this, the company remains enigmatic. Its owners, the Wertheimer family, do not speak to the media and little is known about them. “We never talk,” is pretty much the only utterance to the press ever made by Gerard Wertheimer, the younger of the brothers who control the family fortune.