Five knockoffs. One original. New York decided.
The Iconic Dupe started online. So naturally, we took it somewhere with worse Wi-Fi and better drinks. For our first ever OMHU event in New York, we teamed up with Office Magazine and put TEDDY™ in a room with five of its lookalikes off Canal Street.
Five knockoffs. One original. New York decided.
The Iconic Dupe started online. So naturally, we took it somewhere with worse Wi-Fi and better drinks. For our first ever OMHU event in New York, we teamed up with Office Magazine and put TEDDY™ in a room with five of its lookalikes off Canal Street.
You know the format. A lookalike contest, except this time the contestants were sofas
One TEDDY™ in its ‘dupe-version’ orange. Five real knockoffs. Side by side, no helpful labels.
Guests could sit, squeeze, inspect, compare and vote for the one they thought was the original.
Turns out a screenshot tells you less than your butt does.
People from design, media, fashion and New York’s creative scene came through. Then they got weirdly competitive about sofas.
People sat on every one. Checked seams. Poked cushions. Compared shapes. Debated. Changed their minds. Then voted.
The votes were mixed, which was kind of the point. Still, the overall majority picked TEDDY™ as the original.
Not bad for a sofa with five impostors.
Another surprise: a lot of people already knew the campaign before they walked in. Some had seen it through friends, creators and reposts rather than from us directly. The internet had done its thing.
TEDDY™ gets copied. A lot.
We could spend all our time being annoyed about it. Instead, we made a campaign out of it.
Because dupe culture is bigger than furniture. It is fashion, beauty, memes, marketplaces and the internet doing what the internet does.
So we made the internet argument physical.
If the copy looks almost the same, what actually makes the original worth choosing?
The answer shows up when you use it. In the comfort, construction, proportions, materials and all the small choices a product photo cannot explain.
Office Magazine helped us turn the whole thing into a proper night out.
Six sofas. Voting cards. Merch. Drinks. A DJ. Campaign visuals everywhere. And Miles Mitchell, winner of the viral Timothée Chalamet lookalike contest, there to crown the winning sofa.
The windows did some work too. People stopped on the street, looked in and asked if they could come inside. Some of them were not even invited. Fair enough. Apparently we should have invited more people.
The best part was watching people actually talk about the thing the campaign was built around. We also asked guests about dupe culture, originals, copies and why anyone pays more for the real thing. The answers were not all the same. Which is exactly why the conversation is interesting.
Much better questions over a drink than in a comment section.
Some people spotted TEDDY™ straight away. Some did not.
Good. Otherwise this would have been a very boring contest.
Online, the copies can look very convincing. In a room together, the differences get harder to ignore.
You can copy the shape.
You can copy the colour.
You can get pretty close.
But close is still close.
There is still only one original.
TEDDY™ by OMHU.
