Arie Kopelman, the animated, ebullient president and chief operating officer of Chanel Inc. who helped transform a storied but somewhat calcified French couture house into a global luxury behemoth, died on Oct. 7 at his home in Manhattan. He was 86.
His son, Will Kopelman, said the cause was pancreatic cancer.
Mr. Kopelman’s achievements at Chanel Inc., the American arm of Chanel Ltd., were all the more notable because he was a relative outsider to the fashion industry before assuming the presidency; his only prior experience was handling the Chanel fragrance account for the advertising giant Doyle Dane Bernbach.
“We’d go to shows and Arie would ask me, ‘What’s a set-in sleeve? What’s a drop shoulder?,’” his wife, Coco Kopelman, recalled in a 1995 interview with The Boston Globe. But, she added, “he learned very quickly.”
He assumed the post at an auspicious time. Two years earlier, the company brought in as its creative director the celebrated designer Karl Lagerfeld, whom Anna Wintour, the editor of American Vogue, once described as the “soul of fashion.”
While Mr. Lagerfeld brought vision, Mr. Kopelman — a longtime advertising executive who had handled accounts like Ivory soap for Procter & Gamble — brought marketing savvy.
Armed with Madison Avenue dictums like “Retail is detail,” Mr. Kopelman seized Mr. Lagerfeld’s design vision and helped propel the hallowed French couture house to new commercial heights. “My dad always said that he took the Procter & Gamble playbook and applied it to Chanel,” Will Kopelman said in an interview.
During Mr. Kopelman’s run, the company’s annual sales soared to $7 billion from $357 million, according to Women’s Wear Daily. Mr. Kopelman spearheaded an ambitious expansion of Chanel’s accessories, eyewear, cosmetics, fragrance and skin-care lines. When he joined the company in 1985, Chanel had only two stand-alone boutiques. When he retired in 2004, there were 17 in the United States.
During that period, Chanel launched a host of new fragrances, including Coco Mademoiselle; Égoïste, a men’s perfume; and Chance, which was aimed at a younger demographic. It began running commercials for its venerable Chanel No. 5 perfume — which the company’s storied founder, Coco Chanel, had introduced in 1921 — on MTV.
In a company long known for its aristocratic reserve, Mr. Kopelman pushed for sleeker, more contemporary marketing of new products. For Égoïste, Chanel produced a provocative television spot seemingly plucked from an art-house cinema.
The black-and-white commercial, tinged with surrealism, featured more than 30 couture-clad models perched on the balconies of a stately hotel, barking out lines in French from a poem about egoism, as if berating a lover who had scorned them.
“We want the campaign to have a halo effect,” Mr. Kopelman said of the campaign in a 1991 interview with The New York Times, “to raise awareness for all things Chanel.”
In addition to Mr. Kopelman’s business triumphs, he and his wife became social fixtures in New York. An avid collector of early American art and antiques — he had a particular taste for scrimshaw and weather vanes — he was for years the chairman of the annual Winter Antiques Show, which raised funds for the East Side House Settlement, a Bronx social services center.
In 1989, President Ronald Reagan appointed Mr. Kopelman to the United States Holocaust Memorial Council. He also served on numerous boards, including those of Columbia Business School, St. Bernard’s school in Manhattan, the New York City Ballet and the Municipal Art Society.
While known for his tenacity in business, Mr. Kopelman, who had tried his hand at stand-up comedy after college, also stood out in the intense world of haute fashion for his wit and his loose manner. He was an inveterate jokester and a master of impressions.
“You might not always get what you want from Arie,” Gail Pisano, the executive vice president for Saks Fifth Avenue, said in a 2000 interview with Women’s Wear Daily, “but you’ll sure have fun trying.”
Arie Leonard Kopelman was born on Sept. 23, 1938, in Brookline, Mass., one of three sons — he and his brother David were fraternal twins — of Frank and Ruth (Koritzky) Kopelman.
His father, whose family immigrated from Lithuania when he was a child, was a graduate of Harvard Law School who became a district court judge at 27. His mother later became active in philanthropy and served on the board of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston.
In addition to his son, Mr. Kopelman is survived by his wife, Coco (Franco) Kopelman; his daughter, Jill Kargman; and six grandchildren.
Arie attended the Boston Latin School and, later, Williston Academy (now Williston Northampton School), from which he graduated in 1956. He then enrolled in Johns Hopkins University with plans of becoming a doctor, but he eventually switched to art history.
After his graduation in 1960, Mr. Kopelman applied to Columbia Business School. He was disappointed by how low his Graduate Management Admission Test scores were, but he refused to let that stop him. He called the dean of admissions and told him, “It’s 10 a.m. and I’m getting in my car in Baltimore and will be there at 2 p.m.,” his daughter, an actress and the author of the 2007 book “Momzillas,” said in an interview. “I just want two minutes.”
He was admitted, and after receiving his Master of Business Administration degree, joined a training program at Procter & Gamble that required him to keep tabs on accounts by visiting retail outlets throughout the West.
To cut down on time spent driving from city to city, he took flying lessons. William F. Harrah, the founder of Harrah’s casinos, was a fellow student. During their training flights together, Mr. Kopelman amused Mr. Harrah so much with his jokes and stories that the gambling magnate suggested he try out a stand-up routine at the lounge of his casino in Reno, Nev.
Mr. Kopelman performed a few sets and briefly considered a career in comedy. His father had other ideas.
“I like to joke that he came up with the magic word: disinheritance,” Mr. Kopelman said in a 2013 interview with Women’s Wear Daily, “And doing lounge acts in Rochester didn’t seem too exciting.”
Instead, he took a job at Doyle Dane Bernbach, where he fell under the tutelage of William Bernbach, the agency’s founder and a pioneer of the industry.
He spent 20 years at the agency, rising to vice chairman and later general manager. After Mr. Bernbach’s death and the ensuing changes in leadership, Mr. Kopelman and a fellow executive at the agency decided to leave and start their own shop — ideally with Chanel as its first client.
But when Mr. Kopelman pitched the idea to Alain Wertheimer, Chanel’s owner (with his brother Gérard) and chairman, he did not get the response he expected. “He got angry,” Mr. Kopelman said in 2000, “and said, ‘I will never give you the Chanel account, and I’m surprised you would ask me!’”
It turned out to be a jokey prelude for a much better offer — an opportunity to take the reins at Chanel Inc. It did not hurt that Mr. Kopelman’s French-born wife had an auspicious name (in her case, a diminutive of Corinne).
In his interview with The Globe, Mr. Kopelman recalled what Mr. Wertheimer had said: that he would never find another man married to a woman named Coco.
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