Feature

Fashion Faux Pas

From our very first meeting, before we delve into the complex issues at the heart of his partners' lawsuits, it is clear that Buti has cast himself as the victim in the Fashion Cafe saga. "It is unbelievable what happened to me," he tells me one afternoon as we sit in a cab stuck in midtown traffic. "Everybody thought I had $200 million and they know I don't like lawsuits, so they think they can line up and I will buy them out." As for the accusations against him, Buti insists they are all false. "I never took anything from the company," he says. "I gonna keep saying that for the rest of my life."

Buti claims he knows little about Fashion Cafe's finances -- he did what his lawyers and employees told him to do and signed what they told him to sign. Asked why Valerio Morabito's corporation wired $3 million of its Fashion Cafe investment into Swiss bank accounts when, by Buti's own admission, all of the company's accounts are located in the U.S., Buti pleads ignorance. "I know zero," he assures me. As for why he set up so many corporate entities that appear to have done nothing other than receive and transfer money from Fashion Cafe-related companies, well, he simply has no idea. Buti does concede that he owns DP Entertainment, but claims the firm "represents" Pestova and was the financial entity to which he repaid his wife's loans to the Fashion Cafe. Beyond this, Buti takes a pass on nearly all my specific financial questions and suggests I pose them to his brother and Andy Genett, the Fashion Cafe controller, instead. "Ask my brother. Ask Andy," he says at least a dozen times in what becomes an irritating, Chekhov-like refrain. "We wasting time, spinning wheels."

By phone, Genett assures me that when we meet face-to-face with the restaurant's records before us, he will be able to explain Buti's transactions. But on the day we are to meet, Genett informs me that Palma's lawyers have forbidden him to show me the books and ordered him not to speak to me at all. The company's lawyers, I later find out, are not convinced of the veracity of the records, most of which were created after Buti hired Genett -- the company's first controller -- at the end of 1996. When I inform Buti of the stonewalling, he is alternately enraged and woeful. He claims he might refuse to let the settlement with his partners go forward if Fashion Cafe does not show me the books, but it is a threat he never makes good on. Then there is a new lament: "I wish I knew if I had a copy of all these things," he tells me, but alas, he does not.

The week after New Year's, I meet Buti, Pestova, and their son, Yanick, for lunch at Nobu. They have recently returned from skiing in Switzerland with Stephanie Seymour. Pestova talks to me and tends to Yanick; Yanick happily plays with his chopsticks. Tense and uncharacteristically tight-lipped, Buti frequently leaves the table to take calls on his cell phone, while Pestova talks warmly of her husband. "I trust Tommaso," she tells me earnestly, over green-tea ice cream. "He's one of the smartest people I know." While she acknowledges that the problems with Fashion Cafe made 1998 a bit difficult, she places none of the blame for that on her husband, whom she portrays as a martyr. "It's hard to see someone you love so much suffering or going through injustice," she says in lilting English.

Pestova reports she simply laughed when she found out she was a defendant in one of the lawsuits filed by the Fashion Cafe partners. "They had nothing against me, obviously," she says. "There were so many false accusations and so many lies." As we put on our coats to leave, I ask her about the loans she was involved with. "What loans?" she asks, seeming genuinely surprised. "I didn't know about that," she says. "It's interesting you say that."

Just a week later, the couple announce they are separating. Some insist that Pestova had finally had enough of Buti's rumored affair with another supermodel. Though Buti won't confirm or deny reports of the affair, a close friend of his insists that they are true. In the wake of their separation, it is still uncertain whether Pestova will join her husband's new agency, though some say Buti's pressure on her to leave the relative security of Elite may have hastened the split.

Though he declines to name names, Trump insists the venture is already a success. "We got all these big girls lining up to join," he says, promising major defections from top agencies in coming weeks.

The Fashion Cafe hasn't fared quite as well. Last week, the restaurant's gaudy banquettes were carted on to the sidewalk outside Rockefeller Center and hauled into a moving van. The restaurant is now under new management. Giuseppe Cipriani and Buti's old jet-set friend Stefano Chitis have taken over, with plans to upgrade the food, inject cash into the business, and reopen in Grand Central Terminal this spring.

Buti tells me he will be happy if his fellow Italians succeed. "I still created it," says the head of Trump Management Group. "I'm not a jealous person. I hope everyone's going to make a fortune with Fashion Cafe."