Helene, this is not a new fad designer kitty, the breed has been around for a while! For example, see http://catoftheday.com/archive/1999/August/01.html - way back in 1999 we had one as Cat of the Day!

It is a relatively rare breed, and an American breed, but not brand new:

History
In 1987, in Bozeman Montana, Peggy Voorhees of the Bozeman Humane Society saw an unusual tortoiseshell and white female kitten in a non-pedigreed litter of five that had been born to a feral blue tortie and white mother in a shelter in Wyoming. What made this kitten so intriguing were her noticeably curly hair and whiskers, striking green eyes and ear furnishings that resembled steel wool, or a “Brillo pad.” When this kitten was about 9 weeks of age, she was acquired by Jeri Newman, a Persian breeder. She named the kitten Miss DePesto of Noface, because she apparently was always pestering for attention. “Pest” (as she affectionately came to be known) had prominent cheekbones, slanted eyes, large wide-set ears and a narrow muzzle. Her body was stocky, but her legs were long and she was fairly fine-boned.

Ms. Newman determined that all of Pest’s littermates had normal straight haircoats. Because she could find no reports of any other curly-coated cats in the general vicinity, she suspected that Miss DePesto might be the source of a new, spontaneous curly-coated (Rex) genetic mutation. When Pest turned 14 months of age, Jeri bred her to her lovely black Persian male, CH Photo Finish of Deekay. Out of the resulting litter of six kittens, three definitely had curly coats and curly whiskers like those of their mother. This established that, unlike the genetic mutation in the Cornish Rex and the Devon Rex, the mutation causing the curly coats in Pest and her offspring was dominant. As a result, litters of Selkirk Rex can contain curly-coated and straight-haired littermates. All Selkirk Rex trace their ancestry back to Miss DePesto.