The big sensation at this season's New York Fashion Week isn't a designer or a celebrity but a pair of mysterious socialites from Romania. Calling themselves Elisabeta and Nicolae Petrescu, they've been swanning about town in a vintage Rolls Royce, accompanied by a violinist and an aide who strews flower petals in their path. Invariably, they're carrying a large, fluffy Persian cat named Leo, earning them the sobriquet "the cat people" from mystified showgoers. (Today's Daily carries a photo of them captioned "The Talk of the Town.")

If this sounds to you like a low-concept prank or performance art piece, welcome to the club.

Journalists who've inquired into the Petrescu siblings' background have received vague responses about who their parents are ("nobody you've heard of"), where they're staying ("with friends from boarding school"), and what they're doing in town ("making contacts"). One editor was told they're represented by Williamson PR, which the firm denies. Nexis and Google searches of their names turn up virtually nothing, and certainly no one matching either of their descriptions. (Nicolae Petrescu-Comnen, a Romanian diplomat, died in 1958.)

Assuming it's a put-on, who's behind it?

The obvious suspect is Sacha Baron Cohen, who's currently at work on a movie based on his Bruno character, a gay Austrian fashion reporter. Some have speculated that Cohen, having lost his anonymity with the blockbuster success of Borat, would inevitably resort to a new character or proxies to retain the element of surprise. But Cohen isn't in New York, at least according to his publicist, who declined an invitation for "Bruno" to cover a fashion show, saying he is in London. Besides, using Romanians as his stand-ins might be too much of a giveaway, since the early scenes in Borat were shot in Romania.

Doubts about the Petrescu's authenticity are not, at any rate, affecting their popularity. At the Marc Jacobs show Monday night, the pair was supposedly so mobbed by photographers they had to make an early exit. Bear in mind, we heard that from a publicist.

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