One week after NYFW, Danish design brand OMHU took over New York City with a TEDDY™ Lookalike contest, enlisting Timothée Chalamet dupefluencer Miles Mitchell to poke fun at the knockoffs and prove the value of the original.
The Internet’s Most Copied Sofa Meets Its Knockoffs
On the night of of the 24th of September, Danish design brand OMHU staged a TEDDY™ Lookalike contest a short distance from Canal Street, the epicentre of fake goods, putting the original TEDDY™ face-to-face with five real knockoffs of the internet’s most copied sofa.
The event marked the latest chapter of OMHU’s Iconic Dupe campaign. Earlier this month, after watching its iconic TEDDY™ sofa copied thousands of times online, OMHU did something most brands spend their time trying to stop: it duped itself.
When OMHU Decided to Dupe Its Own Design
The brand created TEDY™, deliberately misspelled, limited-edition dupe of its own sofa, and put it up for sale alongside the knockoffs on TEMU, Etsy, and dupe.com. It sold out in under ten minutes.
A week after New York Fashion Week, OMHU leant in further, borrowing from the fashion playbook and tapping into the wave of lookalike contests that have become a viral cultural phenomenon.
Five Sofas for a Lookalike Contest
At LUME Studios in Lower Manhattan, guests tested and scored the original TEDDY™ against five internet knockoffs, armed with ranking cards, clipboards and measuring tapes.
On hand to announce the results was Miles Mitchell, the Timothée Chalamet lookalike who won New York’s Timothée Chalamet Lookalike Contest in 2024 and later appeared in OMHU’s Iconic Dupe campaign. Mitchell became the winner of that now-famous contest in Washington Square Park, where the lookalike phenomenon turned into a genuine spectacle.
TEDDY™ Takes the Crown
The winner: TEDDY™. And that was the point. The five knockoffs could imitate the look, but when put side-by-side with the original, the difference was clear, proving that copying the silhouette is not the same as replicating the value of the real thing.
The event also reflects OMHU’s wider ambition as a contemporary design brand: creating playful, multifunctional furniture that feel both accessible and iconic, while borrowing from fashion and lifestyle to build a bolder cultural presence, using talent, internet culture, live moments and humour to give the brand a clear point beyond furniture.
A Sofa Goes Home From New York
To celebrate the results, OMHU raffled off a genuine TEDDY™ sofa to one guest.
OMHU partnered with Office Magazine to bring the event to life, with Editor in Chief Simon Rasmussen introducing Mitchell ahead of the winner announcement. The night featured music from Mona Matsouka, drinks from Misguided Spirits and Orion, and food from Danish restaurant Smør.
“Getting duped is iconic. Only icons get copied at this scale,” says Alexander Morabbi Wulsh, CMO at OMHU. That is ultimately what Iconic Dupe is about: not pretending the copies do not exist, but using them to remind people why the original still matters.
