A few months ago, he told me, a booker at Elite had spotted a beautiful, starving Hutu refugee in Time. Somehow, through Doctors Without Borders, this booker managed to track the refugee down and fly her and her eight children to New York, where “Hutu,” as she was known (her name having been deemed unpronounceable) promptly shot covers for Marie Claire and Italian Vogue and garnered an avalanche of publicity for Elite. Not to be outdone, Laura, the CEO of Femme, noticed a beautiful North Korean girl in a story about famine.

“She says to me, ‘Oscar, get me that girl,’” Oscar said, in a perfect imitation of Laura’s heavy Czech accent. “So I embark on this mad goose chase, coming home from work and ordering dinner for my Korean translator, Victor, so the two of us can start calling North Korea, where it’s already the next day, looking for the girl in the picture. After a week of this we track down her father, and Victor tries to explain that we want to fly the girl in the New York Times picture to New York, her father thinks we’re threatening to kidnap her, he’s begging us, No, please, I have no money … Lord give me strength to go on! Anyhow, she’s living in my guest room as we speak. Five-foot-one.”