Harper's Bazaar's "The Mystery of 60s Designer Tzaims Luksus" by Megan Mayhew Bergman.

Harper's Bazaar published on 15 September 2022 an article about Tzaims Luksus, the premier fabric designer and haute couturier of New You City, Paris and now Rangoon.  It covered his fashion presentation in Paris in January 1968.  Of course this wasn't what Harper's Bazaar would do on their own since they still were under contract by the Syndicate et Federacion de la Haute Couture et de la Mode in Paris and deceased business manager of Yves Saint Laurent, Pierre Berge's order to blacklist Tzaims Luksus in 1968 in the world fashion press since Tzaims was creating a serious competition for Yves Saint Laurent and the Paris haute couture. This contract is still in force continued by Bernard Arnault, Sidney Toledano, director of Dior and LVHM, Ralph Toledano, director of the Syndicate Francaise and Federacion in Paris and Anna Wintour editor of Vogue and directice of the Met Costume Institute in NYC.  So how were the editors of Harper's Bazaar able or willing to publish the name Tzaims Luksus?

In early 2022 Megan Mayhew Bergman, member of the faculty of Bennington College in Bennington, Vermont, a fiction writer, decided to write about the college in the 1960s but also after 10 years wondering who lived in a large 1901 Cypress shingle mansion that appeared abandoned in the Village of Old Bennington found out it was Tzaims Luksus, the internationally famous fabric and Paris haute couturier, but the mansion gates were locked and no one knew where Tzaims had disappeared to or if alive.

Researching him she realized how great a part he played in Bennington, Vermont as well as the world and decided to offer her story to the editors of Harper's Bazaar since now it was fashion gossip news long, 50 years, overdue.  Finding him alive and living in Burma and his email wrote requesting an interview.  Tzaims declined, not seeing any reason or purpose in it, and preferred not to have anything written about him, asked her politely not to, but Megan after searching all the local and internet gossip and info she could find about him did so anyway.  Her premise was one of admiration and support for Tzaims though she had never met him.

Well as usual there were some errors in dates, things that needed editing, bits of controversial things journalists like to add to spice things up plus personal details that fringed on psychological theories by Megan and past tragedies in his life.  What was the point Megan and Harper's Bazaar wanted to make?  To bring him back in the Paris Haute Couture limelight or make him appear as a total failure?  Well many readers might wonder.  

The answer is in questions.  What exactly is the Haute Couture in Paris?  What are couturiers, trades persons or intellects?  Who and what is Bernard Arnault?  Who and what are Sidney and Ralph Toledano?  Why is Tzaims a mystery?  What is the real story and not a combination of assumptions, idle and vicious gossip, jealous neighbors, and the opinion of others who never even met him or exaggerated their brief encounters with him?

This blog post is aimed to explain this and Tzaims is the only one capable to do so!  Hence...supposing he is willing to do so. 

 (To be continued)

Continuer...

Answers:  The Haute Couture in Paris is a business venture conglomerate trying to curb the fashion market from other countries.  It is made up of member, correspondent designers, and guest fashion designers selected in importance by a few businesses and administrative women.  The Syndicate Francaise et la Federaciion de la Haute Couture et de la Mode wish to monopolize and define through their control of the term: Haute Couture etc Haute Couturier.  However these French words have long been free to describe any individual anywhere in the world who creates custom (meaning: high cutting) clothes generally for women, nothing more, whereas the English word: Bespoke is generally used by custom tailors for men's clothing.

Couturiers are trades people, not generally intellectual, and not having attended anything remotely associated with academic scholarship but trained specifically in the construction of clothes to become dressmakers and tailors.

Bernard Arnault is simply a Catholic French businessman and not a couturier.  Sidney and Ralph Toledano are simply Moroccan Businessmen from wealthy Jewish families in Marok, and not couturiers.  They control the Haute Couture only in Paris and decide who can be members or guests in their Syndicate Francaise and Federacion dictated by LVHM.

Why Tzaims Luksus is a mystery is the mystery.  Being an art student at several Art Academies worldwide, and an academic scholar of St. Edmund Hall of Oxford University, having read architecture, "the Greats", archeology, philosophy, mythology, anthropology, early languages, current world languages, Asian Studies and Medieval Studies he therefore became a historian and an intellectual.  His interest in textile design came from reading ethnic tribal, anthropological cultures, from a child of 10 years old.  He was educated from 5 years old in all forms of dance including classical ballet, modern, contemporary, tap, ballroom, acrobatics, gymnastics, tennis, archery, fencing and music both voice and piano having sung in all-boy's choirs and as a young adult with oratorio choirs, plain song, Ambrosian and Gregorian chant and major works of Bach, Mozart and Verdi.  He also became famous plying the Lute and singing Elizabethen and Medieval French ballads st his Golden Horne Espresso Cafe at Atlanta, Goergia's historically famous landmark: "The Castle" in the late 1950's, now on the internet.

His interests in fabric and the haute couture is explained in part below.

This success in the Haute Couture in Paris launched Tzaims as the top couturier in the world which caused the Syndicate Franciase de la Haute Couture et de la Parfum to blacklist him from the fashion press in the USA and worldwide by them threatening to cease any advertising in their (media) newspapers. periodicals and magazines if they further wrote about him. 

It's alleged that Pierre Berge saw Tzaims, of the powerful US Fashion industry and NYC, in the 1960s, becoming the fashion capital over Paris, and as the only serious competitive threat of Yves Saint Laurent, and after Tzaims' notable success in Paris in January 1968, bought millions of dollars of full page ads in all US newspapers and magazines on the basis they never cover or print the name Tzaims Luksus again. Berge then opened the first YSL Rive Gauche boutique, based on Tzaim's known plan to create a worldwide TZ.L Boutique franchise system to sell directly through retsil to the public since buyers of women's specialty stores skimped and little was offered from his collections to the public.  Yves Ssint Laurent copied the logoTZ.L creating YSL and opened his first boutique, launching YSL Parfum on Madison Avenue, that same yearv1968, which eventually destroyed the American high fashion industry.  All the fashion editors received large sums to destroy Tzaims Luksus and American fashion and support Paris and Milan with Armani and Cardini (Cardin) following.  Soon, with French gold pouring into NYC smuggled in clothing by French couture houses, like YSL threatened by Pompidou's government, European fashion houses and later the world trade center destroyed all the US fashion and luxury goods industry other thsn powerful commercial Jewish houses like Ralph Lipshitz (Lauren, taking a name like Saint Laurent) and Calvin Kline.  Halston, knowing nothing of designing clothes, emerged through John Fairchild's support, of WWD Women's Wear Daily in NYC, John having personally received millions of dollars from Pierre Berge and the Syndicate Francaise de la Haute Couture et de la Parfum.  Nothing good could ever be said about John Burr (the fashion predator-terminator) Fairchild!

Tzaims realized being at the top of fashion worldwide was mortally dangerous and decided his artistic interests and traveling worldwide was greater than simply being a silly dressmaker stuck in a Paris atelier slaving for brain dead business power freaks or joining the ranks of feminine/gay  dressmaker men with no scholarly interests.  For Tzaims fashion was fun and not a labour, a soft  sculptural art, and like Balenciaga, who earlier greatly inspired him, felt like Cristobal, he would as an older man return to Paris as a couturier. That time has come now!

Unfortunately the Haute Couture took on a big change from creativity to base commercialism, dominated by unbinding though intimidating rules made by administrators of dead fashion houses to monopolize French fashion turning runway shows into a circus like atmosphere controlled by what Tzaims calls clever manipulators and brain dead businessmen, gender confused women and trans male designers each copying and trying to one up each other but edited by fashion editor power freaks to create outrageous creations that all look alike with thousands of onlookers in the audience at lavish venues that overpower the clothes being presented and mean looking ugly models with funny walks that look like zombie robots in assembly lines.  All satisfying the monopolizing Arnault's dream which more resembles a Nightmare Week in Paris.  That is not haute couture!

Tzaims claims Paris Haute Couture, if it can be called that anymore, is a total disaster with the only important fashion houses like Dior, Chanel, YSL, Balenciage and other old great names, all now dead houses with their names and logos more like they are carved on tombstones on their packaging and over their retail outlets.  The other unidentified gaggle of pointless designers with unmemorable silly names having completed the Federacione's fashion design school are just hoping Bernard Arnault will hire them or buy them out for billions of Euros.  Paris is now a joke and fiasco in Tzaims estimation.  Guo Pei, buying her way in and operating in Paris, allegedly taking Covid there on  22 January 2020 from Wuhan and Beijing, since the Covid outbreak began in Paris soon after she arrived, put an end to its credibility, influence and importance.

Earlier, when Tzaims was 28 years old in 1960, living in Athens, Greece, he was convinced to continue his earlier weaving studies of natural fibres interests and then living in Venice, Italy working with Fortuny, convinced him to design silk print for the haute couture worldwide. Returning to Philadelphia in 1961 he decided to become a Fabric Designer since it was a practical craft that he could create in a vertical setup without others changing his concepts or final production as would happen had he taken up architecture which was his earlier professional choice.  He immediately became famous for it.  He had turned his fabric hobby into his profession in order to support financially his more serious career as a fine art-artist, however, textile design made him a major world famous designer not only of textiles and couture but everything else. 

His immediate early meteoric success doing so brought pressure on him from both the fashion press and major buyers and administrators of major women's fashion specialty stores started by Stanley Marcus of Neiman Marcus in Dallas. Texas, after Tzaims received both a Coty and Neiman Marcus award in 1965, to design clothes from his own haute couture fabrics.  His first collection in 1966 was a great success and Tzaims was called the new Christian Dior, enough to seriously launch the Fashion House of Tzaims Luksus worldwide, and that same year he was considered one of the 3 top fashion designers in the USA along side Norman Norell, James Galanos & Tzaims Luksus., and one of the top 10 haute couturiers of the world after his first, American of Russian origin, showing of his among the great couturiers of Paris at the Hotel Crillon in January 1968 Putting him neck and neck with Yves Saint Laurent.  The NY fashion press was furious losing Tzaims in NYC and rather than supporting him Vogue now considered him no longer an American fashion designer and instead of giving him their first Vogue Fabric Award, that they dedigned for Tzaims, gave it to Julian Tomkins, an employee of the Onendaga Fabric Company.  Julian considered it a serious insult to him knowing it was meant for Tzaims.

Most, probably all, of those people from the 1950s and 1960s, when NYC was blossoming in its Golden Age as the Fashion Capital of the world, and Paris and Milan were still respected, are dead including Norell, Halston all US designers, Yves Saint Laurent, Ungaro, Courrege, Balenciaga, Pertigas, Dior, Givenchy, Valentino, even Versaci and the entire fashion press.  It is just all now mostly a dead industry living on past names and laurels run and dictated by global business manipulators.

Only Tzaims Luksus, nearing 92 years old, remains alive in Rangoon Burma, now known as Yangon, Myanmar.  Tzaims has made Rangoon the new fashion capital of the world in Burma!  Singapore is merely the spill over of LVHM's fashion designer unwanted discards since Arnault and the  Toledanos don't want an excessive number of Asians working in Paris.  They don't want Americans either.  So Asian businrssmen for Asian fashion designers now created their own ASIAN COUTURE FOUNDATION in Singapore where Guo Pei is the big influencer with her outlandishlu unwesrabe costume creations.  Imagine a ballroom filled with Chinese ladies all waring a Guo Pei creation.  A rival of a star Wars movie scene!

 If you think such statements and criticisms are unjustified just contact Arnault and the Toledanos and see what they reply back to you.  As far as dealing with John Fairchild, publisher of WWD, Women's Wear Daily, in NYC, he died in 2015 but for the real story of how vicious he was google John Fairchild and look for Meryl Gordon's coverage of him in a 2012 edition of Vanity Fair.  Entitled:  "John Fairchild - Fashion's Most Angry Fella." better called under "Vain Unfairchild - Fashion's L'enfant Terrible!"

Quote:  "He did to me, for no good resson, an attempted but failed ultimate fashion designer assassination January 1968.  I had enough of the disgusting Seventh Avenue Fashion scene and previously walked out.  Paris satisfactorily put me on top and satisfied I just left at the height of my career.  Best time to disappear.  I proved all I needed to prove at age 36.  I could always return when I got much older like Balenciaga did.

Tzaims now is doing exactly as the English Fashion Designer, Charles Frederick Worth, c.1825-1895, did who started and became the father and creator of the Haute Couture in Paris, Worth having his Atelier directly over the Cafe de la Paix in Paris before any other great fashion name appeared in Paris or existed.  This time Tzaims does the same in Asia and SouthEast Asia in the most beautiful city built by the British Raj to rival London now being beautifully restored by the Tatmadaw Military Democratic (based on the Democratic model of Pericles of Athens) Government, It all began on 25 February 2020.  Ces't la vie!

Now.  Starting on 15 September 2022 Harper's Bazaar Magazine, the first US fashion publication, publishes his name after a writer from Bennington College in Vermont discovers him creating his Haute Couture and Pret a porte for men and women and a TZ.L Boutique franchise started in Rangoon, Burma.

Now it's only a matter of time for the top 10 wealthiest women worldwide to fly in their private jets to Yangon, Myanmar to get fitted in his haute couture atelier.  Who will be the first?  Then the top 10 most beautiful women need to somehow find the money to get there but Tzaims' list of the 10 most beautiful women in the world differs from what Vogue or other fashion editors think to be beautiful with some on their list ugly as hell.   Some of those freaks also chosen by Anna Wintour or Bernard Arnault need not request an appointment.  They know who they are and need not be named by Tzaims.

The Haute Couture House of Tzaims Luksus is presently the most exclusive and expensive fashion house in existence in the world today.  

Cheers and Mingalba!