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British-born Reggie Mitchell, 55, who was an officer in the Indian army under the raj, worked his way across the U.S. as a book salesman, hardhat, lumberjack and journalist before opening Reggie's British Pub in Atlanta's splendiferous Omni International complex on Battle of Britain Day (Sept. 15) two years ago. "Even my fellow lumberjacks accepted me here without any questions about who I was or where I came from," he recalls. "The generosity of the people and the mobility of society here are very appealing. There is a resiliency that was missing in the U.K." Reggie's customers are sufficiently resilient to applaud his occasional recitals of Kipling, delivered in a baritone over the Bass.
Bettina Sulzer, 29, whose family is prominent in Switzerland, deals with European clients at Manhattan's prestigious Andre Emmerich art gallery. Says the slender, demure Bettina: "I am into an American group. I don't want to hang around with Europeans as a group. The jet set I certainly don't want to be with." Though her family has always trotted the globe—her grandmother was the last survivor of the Titanic when she died in 1972—she spends her vacations exploring America: this summer she will go to Wyoming, sleeping in a tepee on a ranch owned by friends.
This rich infusion of brains and guts has produced countless success stories in a variety of fields. A galleria of notables:
John Casablancas, 34, a member of an old Spanish family that fled the Franco regime, was educated in Switzerland, Spain and Germany, worked in Belgium, Spain, Brazil and France before moving to the U.S. in 1977. His eight-year-old model agency in Paris, Elite, is Europe's biggest. It was only "natural" for him to start another Elite in New York; in its first full year the agency expects to gross at least $4 million. Though he keeps an apartment in Paris and a farm in southern France, his base is a four-bedroom East Side Manhattan apartment that he shares with blonde Model Jeanette Christiansen. Another of Casablancas' stars is red-haired Yasmine Sokal, 23, a toplofty (5 ft. 11 in.) top model who was born in Munich but has French citizenship. Conveniently, Yasmine—who was the face on Bloomingdale's shopping bag last year—shares an opulent apartment overlooking Central Park with Marco Glaviano, 35, a Sicilian-born fashion photographer who also intends to settle in the U.S. "Here I feel all this creative energy," says Glaviano. "Everyone in the arts who has something to say is here. You get ideas even if you don't want to."