Designer Bijan Pakzad dies

Bijan Pakzad, an Iranian American designer of jewelry, fragrances and luxury menswear who ran a Beverly Hills boutique and was renowned as clothier to some of the world’s most powerful men, died Saturday morning at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, his family said.

Pakzad was 67, his family said.

He suffered a stroke while working Thursday and was rushed to the hospital but never recovered, said his son, Nicolas Bijan Pakzad, 19. He said his father once named a fragrance DNA in honor of his three children, Daniela, Nicolas and Alexandra.

“He’s dressed over 40,000 clients,” Nicolas Pakzad said, including Presidents Carter, George H.W. Bush, Clinton, George W. Bush and Obama. “We have a picture of all five living presidents wearing his suits.” He said his father recently traveled to Washington, D.C., for an event honoring George H.W. Bush, whom he counted as a friend.

Pakzad was born April 4, 1944, according to his family, although some public records list the year of his birth as 1940.

He was born to affluence in Iran, went to a boarding school in Switzerland and moved to the United States in 1971. He opened House of Bijan, his by-appointment-only boutique on Rodeo Drive, five years later. He put his own image on billboard ads, attached his signature to the lining of jackets and was often referred to only by his first name. He offered exclusivity and, rather than apologize for staggering prices, made them a selling point, boasting in one ad that he sold “the costliest men’s wear in the world.”

“I am not a mass designer,” he told The Times in 2003, at a time when sales of his fragrance lines, clothes and custom jewelry reportedly totaled more than $70 million annually. “What was important to me was not to have 2 million clients, like Versace, but to have 20,000 clients.” He said he had invoices reflecting clients who spent $800,000 on a single visit to his boutique.

“Journalists don’t understand, because what I do is outrageous,” Pakzad said. “They wonder, who can pay so much money for clothes? They think my customers must be Mafioso or something. Most people would not believe the way my clients live.”

Pakzad was not shy about acknowledging an outsize ego. “With my ego, I would have been successful anyplace, but America gave me the opportunity to show my taste,” he told The Times.

In a 2001 book about marketing, “Brand Slam,” brand analyst Frank Delano noted the savvy behind Pakzad’s approach. “Bijan is the artist and thinker behind his brand,” Delano wrote. “His appearance in magazine ads reminds his customers that they’re getting a signed Bijan, not a product from his studio.”

 A full obituary will follow at latimes.com/obituaries.

-- Christopher Goffard

 Photo: Bijan Pakzad in 1988. Credit: Los Angeles Times

Fashion designer Charles Nolan dies at 53

Fashion designer Charles Nolan, known to have a passion for American classics, which he skewed with a modern edge and personal touch, died Sunday. He was 53.

Women's Wear Daily, which first reported Nolan's death on its website, said he died of liver cancer. Nolan, also noted for his interest in politics, had battled cancer several years ago, and it came back in the fall and moved aggressively, said Maggie Savage, the vintage buyer for the Charles Nolan store in Manhattan's Meatpacking District.

The store was open Sunday, said Savage, who added that its future was unclear but that she hoped it would continue.

Nolan took a hiatus from the fashion industry in 2003 and worked on former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean's presidential campaign.

"He was a wonderful, very matter-of-fact person," Dean told Women's Wear Daily. "For someone who had a tall record in the world of fashion, he was surprisingly unimpressed with his own success."

Nolan returned to the fashion world in 2004 with his own label. The former designer for corporate fashion houses Anne Klein and Ellen Tracy scaled back and put his own spin on everything, down to the furniture in his store and his off-the-beaten-path runway shows. In one recent season, he featured Olympian Dara Torres on the catwalk; the year before that, dancers from the American Ballet Theater were his models.

Nolan graduated from the Fashion Institute of Technology and apprenticed under Bill Blass and Christian Dior before moving to Ellen Tracy. In 2001, Anne Klein hired him to revive its image as a hipper, more fashion-forward brand.

-- Associated Press

Photo: Charles Nolan, right, in 2002. Credit: Associated Press

Isabelle Caro, model who suffered from anorexia, dies at 28

Isabelle Caro, a French actress and model whose emaciated image appeared in a shock Italian ad campaign and whose anorexia and career were followed by others suffering from eating disorders, has died at 28. Caro died Nov. 17 after returning to France from a job in Tokyo, her longtime acting instructor, Daniele Dubreuil-Prevot, said Wednesday.

Dubreuil-Prevot said she did not know the cause of death but that Caro "had been sick for a long time," referring to her anorexia.

Caro was featured in an ad campaign by Italian photographer Oliviero Toscani in 2007 for an Italian fashion house. Under the headline "No Anorexia," images across newspapers and billboards showed Caro naked, vertebrae and facial bones protruding. (A billboard from the campaign can be seen at the end of this post, after the jump. Note, though, that the image may disturb some readers.)

In later interviews, she said she weighed about 59 pounds when the photos were taken.

Caro said on her blog and in interviews that she had suffered from anorexia since she was 13. She wrote a book published in France in 2008 titled "The Little Girl Who Didn't Want to Get Fat."

One year ago: Gene Barry

Gene Barry was an actor who made a career of playing dapper and debonair lead characters on television in the mid- to-late 20th century. He died one year ago at age 90.

Barry was a versatile performer who delivered a Tony-nominated performance in the hit 1980s Broadway musical "La Cage aux Folles," in which he portrayed a gay impresario of a drag nightclub named Georges. He considered the role the best of his career.

The impeccably dressed Barry, a suave and sophisticated magnet for beautiful women, wasn't interested in joining his era's crowded ranks of TV cowboys. Instead, he preferred "a guy who looked good in clothes," he told the Associated Press in 1989.

"He has the remarkable knack of wearing a tuxedo well. He is at home in it, secure in it," producer Aaron Spelling once told TV Guide.

Among Barry's other roles were a James Bond-ish character named Amos Burke in "Amos Burke: Secret Agent" (previously "Burke's Law"), a publishing tycoon in the 1968-71 NBC adventure series "The Name of the Game" and the lead character in "The War of the Worlds" (1953).

His acting career was in decline by the 1980s, but it regained traction with his performance in "La Cage aux Folles" in 1983. His final screen role was in Steven Spielberg's 2005 "War of the Worlds," in which Barry and Ann Robinson, his co-star in the 1953 movie, played the grandparents.

For more on the dashing actor, read Gene Barry's obituary by The Times' Dennis McLellan.

-- Michael Farr

Photo: Gene Barry in 1951. Credit: Paramount Pictures

One year ago: Irving Penn

Irving Penn, who died one year ago at age 92, was one of the first commercial photographers to cross the chasm that separated commercial and art photography.

Penn, who began his work in the 1940s, had a "less is more" style that he applied to all his subjects -- models, cigarette butts, designer dresses. He isolated his subject against a plain backdrop, allowing for scarcely a prop and building a work of graphic perfection through his printing process.

Critics considered the results to be icons, not just images, each one greater than the person or object in the frame.

His most familiar photographs are the cosmetics ads he shot for Clinique that have appeared in magazines since 1968. Each image is a balancing act of face-cream jars, astringent bottles and bars of soap that threatens to collapse.

His work has appeared at New York's Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and he shot more than 150 covers for Vogue magazine.

"His approach was never obvious," Phyllis Posnick, who collaborated with Penn at Vogue, told The Times. "He would make us go further and dig deeper and look beyond the obvious solution to a photograph to find something that was unique. He had a great wit, and you see some of that in his pictures."

Penn's brother, the noted director Arthur Penn, whose films included "Bonnie and Clyde," died last month.

For more on the famous photographer, read Irving Penn's obituary by The Times. Also, see a photo gallery of his work.

-- Michael Farr

Photo: Irving Penn in a 1943 self-portrait.

One year ago: Donald G. Fisher

Donald G. Fisher was looking for the right fit. Instead, he found a new career.

Fisher was a real estate developer who switched to retailing at age 41 after he tried to return a pair of ill-fitting jeans at a local department store. He thought the store was a mess and had a limited selection. He could do better.

Fisher and his wife, Doris, started the Gap clothing chain with a single store in San Francisco and built the company into a brand name known around the world. Fisher died a year ago of cancer at age 81.

Their concept featured a broad selection of jeans, neatly arranged by size in wall cubicles, rather than stacked haphazardly on tables.

Fisher's news obituary appeared in The Times on Sept. 28, 2009.

-- Keith Thursby

Photo: Donald G. Fisher in 1991.

Looking back at Alfred Shaheen

Next week the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles is opening a retrospective of textiles and clothing designed by Alfred Shaheen, a textile manufacturer specializing in aloha prints who died in Torrance in December 2008.

Shaheen, who revolutionized the textile industry in postwar Hawaii, designed a seemingly endless array of shirts, dresses, bathing suits and decorative items, many of which will be displayed in the museum exhibition. The show opens Tuesday and runs until Aug. 8. More information is at the museum website.

Click here to read the news obituary of Alfred Shaheen that appeared in The Times in January 2009. A photo gallery showing selections of his designs is here.

More information about Shaheen's life and work can be found at his website, www.alfredshaheen.com.

-- Claire Noland

Top photo: Alfred Shaheen designed the bright red Hawaiian shirt Elvis Presley wore when he posed for the cover of the "Blue Hawaii" soundtrack in 1961. Credit: Beyond Words Publishing Inc.

Bottom photo: Alfred Shaheen.

Malcolm McLaren: Svengali or superpro?

McLaren: Svengali or superpro?

That was the headline in The Times on Jan. 25, 1983, in a profile of Malcolm McLaren written by former Times pop music writer Richard Cromelin, accompanied by this portrait of the music impresario at the Chateau Marmont.

By 1983 the Sex Pistols had been done for years, and McLaren had moved on to working with New York rappers. McLaren, whom Cromelin called "punk's chief propagandist" and a "self-styled subversive," had this to say about the Sex Pistols:

"The Sex Pistols created a tremendous amount of debris, and that was very rewarding. It's like a child who loves to destroy something in order to find out what it's made of. They were like a 5-year-old child -- smash everything. They did fantastic things by demystifying all the pop myth and pop packaging and the supremacy of a rock 'n' roll aristocracy who were basically just plundering black music.

"The problem with the Sex Pistols was that they just weren't able to construct something from the debris."

Click here to read the rest of the story as it appeared in the Times in 1983.

And click here to read the news obituary of McLaren.

-- Claire Noland

Photo: Malcolm McLaren at the Chateau Marmont in January 1983. Credit: Los Angeles Times

Nancy Daly and her shoes

Nancy Daly left an impressive legacy of social activism when she died last October at age 68. She helped create the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services, and she served many organizations that try to improve the lives of disadvantaged children.

She also left behind a lot of shoes. Her daughter Linda Daly wrote an essay about her mother's closet collection in the March issue of the Los Angeles Times magazine. Click here to read the whole essay, in case you missed it.

-- Claire Noland

Photo: Nancy Daly in 1995. Credit: Carol Cheetham / For The Times

L.A. modeling agent Nina Blanchard's rise to the top

Nina Blanchard, the founder of an internationally known Hollywood modeling agency who died Feb. 7 at age 81, borrowed $300 and a tiny office from a friend to launch the Nina Blanchard Agency in 1961. 

Most of the $300 was spent on a brochure featuring her models, which Blanchard mailed to photographers and advertisers.  But most of the few models she started with had no professional experience, Blanchard recalled in a 1986 interview with The Times, and she was in a panic when photographers soon began calling to book her models: "I thought, 'Oh, my God, they can't! These girls don't know what they're doing.'"

To buy time, Blanchard told the photographers that the models they wanted were unavailable.  

"Suddenly, the word was going around town that all my models were booked," she recalled with a laugh. "Then I started getting calls from other models, who said, 'We hear you're the hot new agent in town.' And they started coming to me."

One was top model Dolores Hawkins, who introduced Blanchard to Eileen Ford, whose New York modeling agency was deemed the largest in the country. "Eileen couldn't have been nicer," Blanchard said. "I would call her and ask, 'What do I do about this?' She gave me lots of advice. Then she started sending models to me here in California." Ford quickly became a close friend, and over the years many of Blanchard's models would work with Ford when they had New York assignments and vice versa.

By the 1980s, Blanchard's current and past models included well-known names such as Cheryl Tiegs, Christie Brinkley, Shari Belafonte, Rene Russo, Cristina Ferrare and Catherine Oxenberg.

The complete obituary of Nina Blanchard is here.

-- Dennis McLellan

Photo: Nina Blanchard in 1995, the year she sold her modeling agency to Eileen Ford. Credit: Carol Cheetham / For The Times

They may be dead, but these celebrities are nonetheless making money

It's that time of year, when Forbes magazine releases its annual list of top-earning dead celebrities. You might think Michael Jackson would top the list, since his estate has opened the floodgates with music and a film, "This Is It," to satisfy consumer demand for all things MJ in the wake of his unexpected death in June.

But no, holding on to the No.1 spot is French fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent. Laurent died of brain cancer at age 71 in June 2008. Boosted by the auction of much of his estate at Christie's in February, more than $350 million has been raked in during the last 12 months, Forbes reported.

Coming in No. 2 is the team of composer Richard Rodgers and lyricist Oscar Hammerstein, the duo responsible for such Broadway and movie musicals as "South Pacific," "The King and I," "The Sound of Music," "Carousel" and "Oklahoma!" Rodgers died in 1979 and Hammerstein in 1960, but they still combined to earn $235 million in the last year.

Then Jackson shows up at No. 3 with $90 million.

The rest of the list, according to Forbes:

4. Elvis Presley, $55 million.

5. J.R.R. Tolkien, $50 million.

6. Charles Schulz, $35 million.

7. John Lennon, $15 million.

8. Theodor Geisel (Dr. Seuss), $15 million.

9. Albert Einstein, $10 million.

10. Michael Crichton, $9 million.

The full Forbes coverage is here.

-- Claire Noland

Photo: Fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent at his London boutique in 1969. Credit: Associated Press

San Francisco says farewell to Donald G. Fisher

The man who created the Gap clothing chain received a high-profile farewell in San Francisco.

Donald G. Fisher died in September at his San Francisco home after a long battle with cancer. He was 81.

The San Francisco Chronicle reported that about 5,000 people, including Willie Mays and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, attended the Oct. 23 tribute. The story's author was as high-profile as many of the guests: former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown in his Willie's World column.

-- Keith Thursby

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