All content creators, curls, jaw bronzers, the police and me.
Photo: Stefan Jeremiah/AP Photo

“Where are you?” a girl shouted into her phone in Washington Square Park. “I said, Where Are you? Get your ass over here. The Timothées are here!”

On a very sunny Sunday afternoon, right next to the NYU campus where Timothée Chalamet was once enrolled, a few hundred people gathered under the Washington Square Arch, waiting for people who looked like Chalamet to arrive and compete. In the hour leading up to the event, there were many questions and confusion: What would the competition entail? Who organized this thing? Who judged? Would Chalamet himself appear?

The anticipation for the event began several weeks before. In mid-September, signs advertising a “Timothee (sic) Chalamet Lookalike Competition” with a cash prize of $50. Everything about the ad, from the QR code that links to a Partiful page listing around 2,500 participants (and perhaps even 600 or a little more), to the simple formatting with a squished-up image of Chalamet himself, left suggesting that it was a real “Only in New York” ad. kind of event, the ideally silly meeting that might offset the otherwise sour mood in the city as Donald Trump rolled into town two miles north for his rally at Madison Square Garden. “I have to be there in 30 minutes,” one of the professional photographers said to another. “So let me know who wins.”

There were more than Chalamets in attendance — and apparently more than people desperate to meet someone who might look like Timothée — there were content creators. Selfie sticks, iPhone tripods, baby microphones as far as the eye can see. Being a modest 6 feet tall myself, every time I held my camera up in the air to take a photo of the action, I usually found myself taking photos of other people taking photos. Was no one there to see who was most like the young king in looks, voice, and overall energy? Or were we all just there to post about it?

In this sea of ​​creators, the Chalamets thrived, eager to be photographed, talk into iPhones, shake hands and even flirt with one another. The doppelgangers adopted various aesthetic strategies. For Spencer DeLorenzo, a 22-year-old who works in film, getting into the role required “a conditioner that darkens the hair” and an “8:30 a.m. salon appointment” to get the signature Chalamet curls . DeLorenzo had all the nervous charm of Chalamet on the red carpet – he looked away and laughed a little. “Fifty dollars will probably go to my dinner tonight,” he said of the prize money. “If I meet a gorgeous young woman, maybe she can come with me.”

Vincent Panetta, an 18-year-old from Vermont, rocked up dressed as Bob Dylan, a tribute to Chalamet’s upcoming event A complete unknown. “Several people have compared me to Bob Dylan, so I felt like it would be best to do it that way.” For Cramer Ekholm, an 18-year-old from Wisconsin, the approach was a bit of streetwear from Chalamet and dune Chalamet arrived wearing a black robe and white T-shirt. Ekholm also carried an MCoBeauty bag: his appearance was sponsored by the cosmetics company – their cream bronzer was put to good use to sculpt Chalamet’s jawline.

However, a number of people were ultimately unimpressed by the similarities. “Just because you have curly hair doesn’t mean you look like Timothée Chalamet,” said Ariana, a 24-year-old who came to the event. “I have curly hair. I should come in. What’s stopping me if some of these this People come in?” Few agreed on what the measure of a successful Chalamet lookalike is: “It’s not just the hair,” I heard one woman say to another. “He’s not hot because he’s hot. He’s hot because he’s unattainable.”

The curly hair in question.
Photo: Stefan Jeremiah/AP Photo

Shortly after one o’clock in the afternoon, the organizer of the event appeared in a top hat and suit. This wasn’t, as the Partiful suggested, a random guy named Gilbert; That was YouTuber Anthony Po, the whole event was another one of Po’s long, elaborate performances, like the time he performed as “Cheeseball Man.” From the second Po arrived, shouting loudly through a megaphone into the jostling crowd as police stormed into the gathering and the real Chalamet came and went, it was clear that the event lacked the organizational coherence of a stunt planned by a YouTuber would have. After the police came to talk to Po (and apparently fined him for lack of crowd control), he led everyone, Chalamets and all, through the NYU campus and ended up at the Mercer Playground, where the judging took place .

Po subjected the Chalamets to a series of qualifying rounds in the competition: First, the Chalamets stood front and center on the playground, where people either cheered or booed them. Then the contestants answered Miss America-style questions (about being French, about Kylie Jenner), after which women came to, I don’t know, inspect them. At this point the megaphone had fallen silent and the sounds of the event were lost in the chatter of attendees. “I have a feeling we should get bagels soon,” the person behind me said as another woman walked up to inspect the chalamets.

There was a final round of boos and cheers, the most enthusiastic applause going to Miles Mitchell, dressed as Willy Wonka, and Zander Dueve, dressed as Paul Atreides. Would it really be a Chalamet-like competition if the Chalamets most similar to Chalamets were Chalamet? Characters? “One of the requirements should be that you have to be born here to compete,” said a woman behind me. “That’s half the battle with him.” The fact that the men in costumes were the finalists in the end indicated a relatively unrecognizable quality for Chalamet. None of us truly understand what a heartthrob is, not even those who have encountered one in Washington Square Park.

Mitchell’s Wonka Chalamet ultimately took home the prize – a huge check for fifty dollars, likely dwarfed by what Po earned from advertising sales for his later video. Mitchell didn’t seem to mind. The victorious Wonka threw candy into the crowd, and hordes of fans descended on the group of losing Chalamet lookalikes, hoping that they might already have $50 on them and might want to go to dinner. A man at least two heads taller than me craned his neck to get a good look at the winner. “He’s just wearing a Wonka costume. He doesn’t even really look like Timothée Chalamet,” the man said. A woman in front of him spun around. “So what?” she snapped. “You think You Do?”