In Memory of Bijan Pakzad...

By Tom This past weekend Bijan Pakzad was taken ill at his Beverly Hills boutique Bijan with an apparent stroke. He was rushed to surgery at Cedars Sinai, and died there on April 16th. He was one of the people who made Rodeo Drive what it is today, and I can't imagine what it will be like without seeing his smiling countenance and yellow Rolls out and about. He was a true original and one that will be missed. In his honor, PST is re-posting the review of his eponymous fragrance from last year. My Scent Twin posted about this scent, which reminded me that I've had a beensy little tester of this forever. Since it's been in the back of a closet forever it was in good shape and I thought I would revisit it. Flashback to the late 80's: Reagan was in office, "Dynasty", "LA Law" and "Knots Landing" were the big shows and I was moving to Los Angeles. I chose specifically to live in Beverly Hills, since (compared to NYC) rents were cheap and I wanted to live in the quietest, safest neighborhood I could find that still let me walk to the party-town that is West Hollywood. 80's scents were big. Big Shoulders big. Hiroshima big. Giorgio was still open at the corner of Rodeo and Dayton, puffing its eponymous scent into the intersection. At that long light it would permeate your car for hours. Bijan didn't spritz. Bijan was super-exclusive. You didn't walk into Bijan, it was appointment only in an era when that was unheard of. What people didn't hear was that once you bought something from Bijan there was an unheard of level of customer service: if you popped a button or tore a lining a trip to the store would mean that you and your garment would be pampered equally. If you were a resident of the Westside who traveled Santa Monica Boulevard Bijan was a fixture on his billboard near Sepuleveda, his tanned smiling face reminding you that he was having a great time selling stuff you can't afford to people you'd never meet. His new-every-year Bijan-yellow Rolls-Royce was always parked in front of his store, parking tickets be damned. At the end of the decade Bijan introduced his fragrance. It was a big, rich concoction of white flowers with an ambery vanillic base. The sample I have isn't labelled, but I suspect it's and EdeP at best and a few dabs at the crook of the elbow are as handsome and as dated as Brenda Dicksons "Welcome to my Home". But you know, it's still better than 80% of most things coming out right now, and if American Apparel can make a fortune recycling the 80's then why not this? Just please, for pitys sake, don't spray... From Gaia's review: The only concentration still in production is an EDT (usually a dead giveaway for reformulation) and it's official retail price according to Bijan's website is $130 for 1.7 oz. Seriously. Searching online reveals it can actually be bought from various sources for under $30, and the EDP is still around here and there. My sample is from the bowels of my closet.