Arie Kopelman, Former President of Chanel Inc., Dies at 86

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.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe....