Clockwise from top left, Elena Franklin, 18, from Sascha. Juliette Morvan, 24, from Lovely Day. Cecele Hartmann, 23, from Cafe Habana. Peter Fink, 25, from Lucien.   (Photo: Martina Hoogland Ivanow)

I f New York is the flame to which scores of the world’s most beautiful, multiracial, multiethnic youth are drawn, then the city’s waiter and waitress ranks are its red-hot center. Where else in the world can you look up from your fatty-toro sashimi or cheeseburger and find yourself staring into the eyes of a ruby-lipped Botticelli Venus? Or a porcelain-skinned John Currin? Or a Mapplethorpe subject? Brunch and a gallery crawl? Why bother. It’s redundant.

Related:

• Archive: “People”
• Table of Contents: December 25, 2006 issue of New York | Subscribe!