Bijan Pakzad | High-end designer, 71

Bijan Pakzad, 71, the ritzy fashion designer whose by-appointment-only Rodeo Drive boutique is billed as "the most expensive store in the world," died Saturday at a Los Angeles hospital. He had suffered a stroke Thursday.

Mr. Pakzad - or simply Bijan, as he preferred to be known - unabashedly promoted the opulence of his glamorous life, his stores, and his clientele. He starred in his own advertisements, appearing on billboards and in magazines beside celebrity clients such as Bo Derek and Michael Jordan, or posing provocatively with nuns and a rabbi or, in one campaign, a model who slapped his face and, in the caption, called him a chauvinist.

His Beverly Hills store (also called Bijan), a Mediterranean-style palazzo that opened in 1976, has carried such luxuries as a $15,000 vicuna coat, a $120,000 chinchilla bedspread, and a $65,000 crocodile-trimmed luggage set. The decor was suitably over the top, with $500,000 worth of Persian rugs, a $400,000 Lucite-and-brass staircase and a $75,000 chandelier.

The walls were painted a sunny shade of yellow that was a Bijan signature. When he opened a second store on Fifth Avenue in New York in 1984, he said he spent $10 million on its design.

Mr. Pakzad was also known for his jewelry and fragrances; the original cost of his cologne was $1,500 for six ounces, although he later produced several best-selling mainstream versions, recognizable by their doughnut-shaped bottles. But his real specialties were top-notch menswear and the art of promotion.

He once had $20 million worth of diamonds braided into Derek's hair for a perfume campaign.

Mr. Pakzad was born in Tehran, Iran. His father, a wealthy industrialist, sent him to school in Switzerland and Italy, where he studied design. For seven years he designed menswear in Florence, Italy. He opened Bijan after moving to Los Angeles in the early 1970s and quickly expanded into jewelry, fragrances, and sportswear, becoming a millionaire many times over.

The New York store, which closed in 2000, was a source of perpetual fascination for shoppers because it was also by appointment, a policy that had to be explained to countless frustrated visitors. But Mr. Pakzad said that an air of exclusivity was an effective way to attract the customer he was after.

"Anyone can make an appointment," he said. "I am not snobby." - N.Y. Times News Service