Jocelyn Wildenstein — the wealthy socialite nicknamed “Bride of Wildenstein” and “Catwoman” because of her extreme plastic surgery — clawed the face of her fashion-designer boyfriend with her fingernails and then slashed him with scissors during a fight in their Manhattan pad, police said Wednesday.
Wildenstein, who is 76 — but who told cops she’s 71 — was so out of control during the Tuesday night melee that her 49-year-old boyfriend, Lloyd Klein, pushed her into a closet and held her there until cops arrived, sources told The Post.
“That situation is very disturbing,” Klein later told The Post of the incident.
“It’s very intimate, very private — I’d rather not say” what the argument was about, he added.
Wildenstein spent most of Wednesday in police custody until she was arraigned in Manhattan Criminal Court and freed without bail on felony and misdemeanor assault charges.
“Ten more steps — step down,” her lawyer guided her as she left court, her face so swaddled in a red and black pashmina-style scarf that she could barely see and had to be led by the arm.
Wildenstein was spotted using a contraband cellphone as a mirror in the courtroom while waiting for her case to be heard. She used it to try to tame her leonine mane with a brush and apply makeup for her appearance.
“Give me that!” a furious court officer snapped at her as she sat primping on a courtroom bench, swiping the forbidden phone from her hand.
The Swiss-born Wildenstein was infamous 20 years ago for spending millions of dollars on misguided cosmetic surgery to make her look cat-like. Her divorce from billionaire art-dealing husband Alec Wildenstein also was fodder for tabloid headlines. He died in 2008.
Jocelyn Wildenstein once explained that she sought out surgery in part to make her eyes look more feline.
“The lynx has perfect eyes,” she said in an interview in 1998.
Cops busted the raging Wildenstein in the wee hours Wednesday at the couple’s apartment at Trump World Tower in United Nations Plaza in Turtle Bay — where the cheapest pads start at $2.4 million.
She was hauled to the nearby 17th Precinct before dawn and from there to court, where she met with her lawyer, Alan Kachalsky.
Wildenstein could be heard sobbing — yowling, actually — as she discussed her case with the lawyer in a private attorney-defendant meeting area.
“She was physically hurt” herself in the spat, the lawyer said afterward.
“But not on her face. Somewhere you wouldn’t see in court,” Kachalsky said without elaborating.
Klein, the lawyer stressed, had “no stab wounds.”
It’s not the first time that cops have been called to Wildenstein’s address after a domestic fracas.
In 1997, a fight raged at her then-14-room townhouse on East 64th Street after she allegedly caught her art-dealer husband “entertaining” a naked teenage blonde.
She called the cops after the errant Alec pointed a 9mm semiautomatic her way. He spent two years on the lam in Europe and Kenya before turning up and pleading guilty — also in Manhattan Criminal Court.