curl cream and husband hunting: best moments from the dev patel lookalike contest
it's brown boy autumn in san francisco. i asked the devs about their hair beauty secrets, tech bro fashion & more.
IT’S A BRIGHT sunny Sunday afternoon at Dolores Park. The green hilly expanse looks like a modern version of George Seurat’s pointillist paintings, petticoats and frilled umbrellas replaced with tech bros playing frisbee and Pancho Villa burrito picnics.
Quintessential San Francisco.
I’m here reporting on the Dev Patel Lookalike Contest. I wore my Keen Jaspers for practicality, which was a great decision because later I found myself practically army-crawling through the crowd to find a spot in the media pit next to the NBC camera guy. The Devs started to come out of the woodwork around 1:15pm as an excited crowd formed. There was a palpable giddiness in the air that I imagine was shared at the Timothée event.
Humans just love a good contest!
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Organized by three Bay Area women—Tasnim Khandakar, Sitara Bellam, and Sahana Rangarajan—this event was a playful spinoff of the Timothée Chalamet lookalike contest in New York.
Unlike the other spinoff lookalike contests that reinforce Hollywood’s standard (Harry Styles in London, Paul Mescal in Dublin), this is the first of its kind featuring a male celebrity of color. Between the longstanding “White Boy of the Month” Twitter memes and the more recent fandoms over “Hot Rodent Boyfriends” and the Challengers effect this summer, the It Boys of the moment are predominantly white.
The event organizers wanted to do something different.
“Dev Patel really spoke to us because he’s a handsome brown actor and the Bay has so many people who could potentially look like him compared to other places,” Tasnim shared.
She dubs this moment “Brown Boy Autumn,” a long-overdue spotlight on Patel’s allure as well as his recent directorial debut with Monkey Man.
Reader, the whole thing was pure fun and hilarity. I loved it. I perched gargoyle-style in the cramped media pit, trying to capture the best moments on my iPhone.
Everyone was just happy to be a part of an event where 20 South Asian men with majestic manes lined up pageant style for the chance to win $50 and public adoration. Only in San Francisco, I heard a few people murmur.
Good hair quickly emerged as the star of the show.
As each Dev came up to the makeshift stage and gave a pitch on why they should win, several pointed out that they’ve intentionally styled their hair, beards and mustaches to resemble that of the real Dev’s. One Dev shared that he’s been working on perfecting his wavy mid-length style for years.
At some point, someone shrieked “DROP THE CURL ROUTINE!!!!!!”
So I flagged down a few Devs to chat about their hair (and thoughts on Bay Area fashion). Let’s meet them!
Prad
Prad discovered the event through Partiful and thought it would be good fun. While he hasn’t been told he resembles Dev Patel, that didn’t deter him from competing: “when I saw the people at the Timothée event, I thought eh, why not!” *laughs*
As for his hair journey:
I used to pick fades or whatever people said was trending online feeling like I had to fit in, but then I learnt to do more subtle wavy and curly looks with my natural texture and liked that a lot more than some standard in the media.
Currently I use Miele rosemary oil shampoo, a scalp scrub some days, Moroccan oil conditioner and a leave-in by pattern.
He gets his cuts at Dandies in Mountain View.
Prad also has his own clothing brand (bypradmagal) which combines modern streetwear with South Asian designs like sari fabrics. Sporting a denim on denim look, he shared that while San Francisco is pretty saturated with the stereotypical tech bro fashion of Patagonia puffers and sneakers, vintage looks are on the rise.
Jatan
I usually comb it back after a shower and let it air dry. Occasionally some lighter product when I want it to look more sleek because the heavier ones weigh it down.
My hair is fairly thick so the most important part for me is getting it “de-bulked” by hairdressers usually with thinning scissors.
He likes Redken Brews Cream Pomade For Men, but uses product sparingly. One of his tips is actually using a basic lotion like Aveeno. Jatan wore a cream-colored utility work jacket with a dark contrast collar, which interestingly, the winner of the contest wore as well.
Fun fact: Jatan actually ran into Dev Patel 3 months ago in Los Gatos. He says the actor was very gracious about meeting fans.
Dhruv (left)
Dhruv is a grad student at UC Berkeley.
For my curl care I shampoo every 3-4 days, I usually only slightly towel dry, just to give it some volume, then I use the slightest amount of curl cream just to keep the curls together.
His favorite thing about the event was just “the sense of community.” I heard this from several people…we all just like having a random reason to show up to a third space and mingle with others for free.
“It would be fun to be featured in a few TikToks on my fyp,” Jatan said. “A little bit of fame, but not too much,” he jokes.
He wore a classic white t-shirt and black leather jacket to convey the aura of masculine grit in Monkey Man.
Arthi
As a self-proclaimed lover of random events, Arthi was there for the “female representation.” She made sure she had a good hair day for the competition.
I live by curl cream!! I use mixed chicks leave-in conditioner.
Other Camera Roll Highlights
When Jai (the winner) rolled up late and did a princess wave and everyone thought for a moment that the real Dev Patel made a cameo.
Folks in the crowd yelled “are you single” and in response he said he had a girlfriend and pulled up a photo of her on his phone and proudly showed everyone. Sweet!
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Sanjeev’s friends encouraged him to compete. At one point during our interview, an event attendee walked up to him and said “you. you have a shot.”
I liked the layering + colors in his outfit, and asked him to break it down:
A’s baseball hat from when he used to play Little League
ALD green overshirt
Beige inside shirt from India
Uniqlo tank
Adidas Dragons which are not made anymore. He got in 2015 and “wore the hell out of them”
Blue corduroy bag from Ementa
Sanjeev feels that San Francisco gets an unfair comparison to New York:
Compared to most other cities, we dress pretty decent! People are dressed well outside of FiDi/downtown. Puffers just make sense for practicality because of the microclimate here.
And I should note, not a single Dev showed up in a puffer.
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When Dev #10 broke out into the Jai Ho dance from Slumdog Millionaire, the crowd ATE.IT.UP.
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Big cheers for gay Dev!
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I overheard Kesini chatting with her friend group about ovulating and I knew she would make a great interview. Before I took this photo, her friends rushed in to fix her hair and get her photo-ready <3
What brings her to the event:
I love brown men and I love Dev Patel and I’m ovulating as well (laughs).
The dating scene has been kinda trash. I just wanna come here and maybe find my husband, maybe find some eye candy.
“Make Dev Patel stand next to Timothee Chalamet and there’s no competition. He’s just so handsome. There’s no contest,” Kesini declared as her friends nodded in agreement.
“Did you see him in Monkey Man? I have so many TikTok edits saved on my phone. It’s no longer white boy of the month. It’s brown boy of the month,” she continues.
Kesini hopes to see other contests for celebrities like Zayn Malik and Sidharth Malhotra.
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Dev #4 came to compete because he gets mistaken as Indian all the time (he is Cambodian).
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There’s been some online discourse in response to the Timothée event that these contests are partially a result of dating app fatigue among Gen Z. People want IRL community.
Emma has been dating in SF for about a year, and is currently single. She says that for women, the popular saying “the odds are good but the goods are odd” about the dating scene rings true.
While she would like to meet someone in person, it’s harder—so she’s staying on Hinge for now.
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Finally, I ran into Molehill reader Eileen at the event! We had a really interesting conversation about the sociology of these lookalike contests.
She pointed out how these lookalike contest have focused strictly on male celebrities, and that it wouldn’t land the same way for female celebrities:
“If this were for women I could see it turning real bad […] I don’t think our society is ready for something like that given that we grew up watching beauty contests and pageants where women compete against each other in an objectified way.”
I don’t know if the “bit” would work for women given the cultural and societal context of the male gaze and objectification.
Exactly. I mean, we saw how horrid the internet was when that girl Chelsea on Love Is Blind said she looked like Megan Fox.
Eileen says she is here to be in community and participate in something that has become a national phenomenon.
Phew! What a day.
After the event I grabbed a croissant at Tartine and headed home.
Thanks for reading!
xoxo
viv
The dev ratio on timothee HAHAHAH
This exactly !! “I love brown men and I love Dev Patel and I’m ovulating as well (laughs).
The dating scene has been kinda trash. I just wanna come here and maybe find my husband, maybe find some eye candy.”