Flamboyant Beverly Hills-based designer dies

Most people couldn’t afford his products, but they couldn’t ignore his brash signature on Beverly Hills — adjacent billboards. Those ads have become a monument to designer Bijan Pakzad, who went by his first name, and who died during the weekend.

The native of Tehran proclaimed without apology that his menswear line was the most expensive in the world. The accessories he designed for those clothes included custom-made Rolls Royces and yacht interiors, luxurious luggage, even bulletproof jackets and Colt revolvers.

Visitors to Bijan’s appointment-only showroom on Rodeo Drive included royalty, movie stars and corporate chieftains who could afford the self-proclaimed perfectionist’s attention to detail and quality.

On billboards for his apparel, jewelry and perfume collections, he wore his signature bright monochrome colors and beamed with the satisfaction of a man who truly enjoyed where he’d landed in life. He described his philosophy this way: “The world said, ‘compromise and no one will know’ – so I made my own world!”

Bijan’s family says he died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center after he suffered a stroke; he was 71.