Inside NYC’s glorious, surreal Timothée Chalamet look-alike contest

NEW YORK - At the edgy Queen of Swords hair studio in Brooklyn’s Bushwick neighborhood, “Timothée Chalamet hair” is a popular request. Male, female and gender-non-conforming customers clamor for the same fractal mop of unruly curls that starred in “Call Me by Your Name,” “Wonka” and “Dune.” It’s a “laid-back, sexy” way to look like the hands-down most in-demand actor of the moment, said salon owner Elma Siljkovic, and it’s an easy, squirt-in-some-product-and-go cut for people blessed with fine ringlets like Chalamet’s.

For Sergio Slavnov, a Hell’s Kitchen men’s hairstylist and the founder and owner of Avenue Man Hair Products, “every fifth customer” comes in asking for a Chalamet. It’s a great choice for guys with big foreheads, he tells customers. And if they lack the requisite natural texture, Slavnov sends them to Chinatown, he said with a laugh, “to get a perm.” (Call me by your mane!)

On Sunday afternoon, a Timothée Chalamet look-alike contest took place in Washington Square Park. If there was a problem with that, it’s simply that every day, these days, is a Timothée Chalamet look-alike contest in New York.

A few dozen Timothées gathered under a cloudless autumn sky and blazing orange foliage, a couple of Wonkas, a multitude of Paul Atreideses and a lone Bob Dylan among them. Circling them were several hundred onlookers (some with signs advertising their singledom and/or phone numbers) and peeved officials from the city’s Department of Parks & Recreation, all converging to create a perfect 21st-century New York spectacle.

The great Timothée Chalamet Lookalike Contest of 2024, like so many of the city’s highly specific phenomena lately, was willed into existence by online mischief and youthful horn-doggery; then, in classic fashion, it was squashed by petty bureaucracy and resurrected by attendees’ anarchic sense of humor and their hustle for the proverbial quarter-hour of fame.

And how was it? Peachy.

Slavnov was in attendance, scouting for models and handing out samples of his texturizing spray and volume mousse to finalists. A corgi wore a curly wig and was introduced to adoring fans as “Timothee Corglamet.” And yes, a few Chalamet dead-ringers walked right past the festivities, oblivious.

The contest began as a guerrilla campaign. Paper signs with a photo of Chalamet and a QR code began appearing around the city in September and soon became a social-media phenomenon. The QR code led to an invite on Partiful that billed its organizer only as “Gilbert,” whose avatar showed a man’s face partly obscured by a hat. As the page made its rounds on the internet, the contest’s attendance count swelled to the hundreds and ultimately to more than 2,000. Singles crashed the Partiful invite with “Rolling in to meet my husband!” jokes.

Naturally, friends passed the page along to their most floppy-haired, doe-eyed, razor-jawlined friends. Reed Putman, 21, drove in from rural Ogdensburg, New York - next to Canada! - to compete. At first he joked about it to buddies. And then? “I just want to see if I genuinely have a shot,” Putman said beforehand.

Zander Dueve, a 22-year-old security guard from Atlanta, was already planning to be in town for the weekend to visit his girlfriend, 23-year-old New York University student Aalia Garrett. It was Garrett who urged Dueve to enter. “It was brave of me,” she said with a laugh on Sunday, while nearby a young woman wore a shirt with embroidered lettering: “If you look like Timothée Chalamet, text me ASAP.” (Another woman, 20-year-old Fordham student Chloe Lefaivre, said it flat-out: “I came here looking for a Timothée Chalamet dupe.”)

And - inevitably, as must occur with every too-good impression or too-uncanny resemblance - the wall between citizens and celebrity was collapsed and the man himself was alerted. In late October, a page titled “TIMOTHÉE CHALAMET: We will pay $5,000 to charity if you show up and compete in your own look-alike competition!” was created on the platform Cajole, which enables fans to donate money in an effort to coax a specific person into a specific action. The campaign reached its goal on Oct. 23.

“This is exactly what our platform was designed for,” said David Levy, the founder of Cajole, and the person tasked with taking the completed petition to Chalamet’s representatives (who did not respond to requests to comment for this story).

Would Chalamet show up? It wasn’t impossible: He’s been in town a lot lately, filming the Josh Safdie film “Marty Supreme” in Midtown and the Bob Dylan biopic “A Complete Unknown” in Hoboken. Plus, it’s home. The 28-year-old actor was raised in the Manhattan Plaza artists’ housing. His mom sells real estate in the city’s swankiest neighborhoods. Would Chalamet himself venture out to Washington Square to pull a Charlie Chaplin?

On Sunday afternoon, it turned out, the most urgent question wasn’t whether Chalamet would attend the contest but whether it would happen at all. The rapidly expanding mob of slender, stylish Chalamet wannabes and hopeful onlookers forming around the Washington Square Arch caught the attention of park officials, and rumors began to ripple through the crowd: The contest was being shut down for lack of an event permit.

Sensing an opportunity for an uprising, one contestant shot his fist skyward: “My name is Paul Muad’Dib Atreides, Duke of Arrakis!” he shouted.

“Lisan al-Gaib!” came several shouts back.

Just as the throng began dispersing, though, a man rode in on a penny-farthing bicycle dressed, perhaps symbolically, as Charlie Chaplin. Anthony Po, a 23-year-old YouTuber with more than 1.8 million followers, introduced himself as “Gilbert” before hoisting a five-foot trophy into the air and instructing attendees to follow him and the trophy to a second location. Po, a former staffer for the YouTube behemoth MrBeast, also engineered and starred in the viral “Cheeseball Man” stunt in Union Square in April.

“We don’t go in with the expectation that (these events are) going to be big. So for this one,” Po told The Washington Post on Sunday morning, “we’re going to face the ramifications, maybe.”

Indeed, horns honked in bewilderment as hundreds of young people on foot congested the street, following Po the quarter-mile to the New York University-adjacent Mercer Playground. “He better not be taking us to the NYU dorms,” one attendee grumbled.

But there, on a mound of green-painted cement, with hundreds of now-sweaty onlookers watching, a king of the Timmées was crowned. With the help of two influencers and a portable mic system, Po and his collaborator Tamir Omari presided over a contest judged by fans’ cheers. Overzealously impish contestants got booed, while a dashing 26-year-old with an Australian accent - whose effort to dress or style himself as Chalamet seemed halfhearted at best - became a fast fan favorite.

In a final round, four contestants answered questions about their favorite Chalamet movies and how they’d make the world better. Miles Mitchell, a 21-year-old from Staten Island wearing an impressively full-bore Willy Wonka get-up assembled from Goodwill finds, answered “Free Palestine” to the latter, to an explosion of cheers. Mitchell took home the grand prize: a $50 check. (The trophy, meanwhile, cost Po $250, and he told attendees as they filed out that a fine from the Parks Department will cost him $500.) Dueve, the security guard from Atlanta, clad in an all-black Paul Atreides costume complete with a voluminous scarf, came in second.

For many in attendance, it wasn’t until after the trophy was hoisted, after the Mercer Playground crowd dispersed toward the train stations and their regular Sunday afternoon plans, that the news reached them: Chalamet himself - the real one, in a backward baseball cap and black sweater - had made a brief, courteous appearance at Washington Square Park. Missing him was forgivable. He was, after all, everywhere.