Vince McMahon
Ringmaster

To the extent that the WWF is scripted "sports entertainment" spectacle, the wildly crude, wildly popular circus of the nineties, chairman of the board Vince McMahon is nothing less than a postmodern P. T. Barnum. But to the extent that it's a series of story lines filled with larger-than-life heroes and nefarious villains, he's also a television-age Cecil B. DeMille. "Our detractors would say that the secret to our success is the sexuality and aggression," says McMahon, "but we do a mini-movie every Monday and Thursday night. It's a combination of action-adventure, athleticism, comedy, talk show, and soap opera set to music." Of course, in the sense that the WWF went public in October with a $963.9 million IPO, McMahon is also a lowbrow Walt Disney -- a visionary who built a multimedia, multi-merchandised, multi-million-dollar business on an ensemble of unforgettable cartoon characters like Sable and "Stone Cold" Steve Austin. And despite head butts, body slams, and half-naked women, the WWF is decidedly a family affair: His son, Shane; his wife, Linda; and his daughter Stephanie are all in on the action. "My background was a little volatile when I was young," says McMahon. "One of my biggest accomplishments has been a stable family environment. It's been a tremendous sense of pride that they want to be a part of this."
Anna Rachmansky

Andrew Farkas
Everybody's Landlord

When you buy or rent a Manhattan apartment or send a maintenance check to your co-op, chances are you will be doing business with a company run by Andrew Farkas. When you show up at your company's new office, he is there too. And soon he hopes to help you find a mortgage, lug your crates, gut your kitchen, and redecorate your den. Farkas -- of the Alexander's department-store dynasty -- is the 39-year-old chairman of the real-estate-services company Insignia. This summer, Insignia bought Douglas Elliman, becoming Manhattan's largest broker of office buildings as well as co-ops, condos, and even rentals. "The CEOs and CFOs of Insignia's clients are the same people Douglas Elliman moved into homes," Farkas says. "So why not close both deals?" His penchant for real-life Monopoly is making him the Bill Gates of New York real estate. Insignia plans to provide Internet access to clients and tenants in its buildings, via a Website that will sell related services like mortgages, interior design, and contracting. With such Trump-like ubiquity, can Farkas Tower be far behind?
David Kirkpatrick

William Ivey Long
The (Un)Dresser

Suited and bespectacled, costume designer William Ivey Long displays no outward sign of his magnificent obsession. "There's a lot of lingerie in my life," Ivey Long confesses happily. His impossibly sexy designs include, most notably, the scanty black mesh of Chicago, the gritty teddies of Cabaret, and the now-mythic diaphanous yellow dress draped like spun sugar around Deborah Yates's equally mythic frame in Contact. The 52-year-old North Carolinian landed in New York City in 1975, trailing Yale Drama School classmates Sigourney Weaver, Meryl Streep, Christopher Durang, and Wendy Wasserstein. By 1982, his eye-popping designs for Nine -- particularly a lacy black number for Anita Morris that made her an instant sex symbol -- had won him a Tony. He came early to sartorial storytelling: In kindergarten, little William cajoled his Chapel Hill Sunday-school class into posing for tableaux of the Nativity and the Crucifixion clad only in towels and blankets. (He got expelled.) His daring sense of style now wins him praise, including another Tony (for Crazy for You) and an Obie. Next spring, the lucky ladies in Susan Stroman's The Music Man will benefit from his unerring gift for making actresses look (and feel) ravishing, and sometime soon, boudoirs throughout the city will be blessed with his sexy sense of humor -- he's working on a new line of women's lingerie with business partner . . . Wendy Wasserstein.
Erika Kinetz