Fashion Profiling: Mindy Kaling is Not Malala Yousafzai

Malala Yousafzai and Mindy Kaling
Corbis/Getty Images

Ok, so have you ever been mistaken for someone else? It happens to the best of us. I think. Sometimes it’s a huge compliment, sometimes it’s embarrassing, and sometimes, it’s just a real head scratcher.

Last week, Mindy Kaling, accompanied by a New York Times reporter, was at a party at the Boom Boom Room, a club in the Standard Hotel in Manhattan, when a drunken man in his eighties approached her. He proceeded to have a long conversation with her, complimenting her on all her great work. Kaling, ever gracious, was flattered and thanked him. And then he ended their exchange by congratulating her for recently winning the Nobel Peace prize!

Kaling, who certainly has a great sense of humor, was sweet and laughed off the fact that this man thought not only that she was the 17-year-old  Malala Yousafzai, but that Yousafzai would be hanging out at Boom Boom Room. Funny, but I know exactly how Mindy feels.

I have been mistaken for many people in my life and it’s always made for a humorous story later. As an Asian man in fashion, it’s not unheard of considering the New York Times wrote a story last year about the rise of Asian male designers. Once at a fashion event, a woman raced up to me —while I was WITH Jason Wu — to tell me how much she loved my work. After an in depth conversation, she ended it by telling me how beautiful I have always made Michelle Obama look. Afterwards, I turned to Jason and said, “Oh I think she thought I was you,” despite the fact that I am slightly taller and a lot older! Of course this was sweet and she meant no harm, but we were 1) at a fashion event and 2) Jason was standing just a few feet away. It isn’t like she saw me out of context. Jason and I still laugh about it today.

Back in 2003, when the Tom Cruise movie The Last Samurai was in theaters, I recall being chased by a skateboarder into the Virgin records store who insisted I WAS Ken Watanabe, the lead actor in the movie. As much as I tried to tell him I was not, he just looked at me and smiled.

"Oh I GET it. Don’t worry,” he said slyly. “I won’t say anything. Your secret’s safe.” And with that, he whizzed out of the store.

But my funniest mistaken identity moment happened just a few months ago when I started at Yahoo. I was in Silicon Valley for a meeting and was signing into the reception area (I hadn’t received my ID card yet) when the lady at the front counter insisted I was an engineer coming back to work at Yahoo as a “boomerang.” (A boomerang is someone who returns to the company after leaving.) In my Zuckerberg-approved jeans, hoodie, polo and backpack, I politely said, “No, I’m not an engineer and I’ve never worked here before.” Again, she argued with me that it can’t be true. I just smiled.

When I told this story to a real engineer at Yahoo (who are all way younger and cooler than me), she said it was racial profiling. But I disagree. I am going to chalk that up as Fashion Profiling. And I’m ok with that.