'It's just fashion, baby; we're not saving lives': Sufi Motiwala reveals his approach towards reviewing celebrity looks

Sufi Motiwala, took Instagram by storm last month, dissecting the fashion triumphs and faux pas of celebrities at Cannes and the Met Gala, to the delight of his 3.6 lakh followers. Pic/Ashish Raje

In the last fortnight, it's been raining Cannes couture on social media. As the initial excitement over the film festival's red carpet photos wears off, we turn to our friendly-but-judgy neighbourhood fashion commentator, Sufi Motiwala (@sufimotiwala) for some real entertainment.

Right off the bat, he goes for the jugular, and even his self-confessed muse, Janhvi Kapoor, is not spared. The pink Tarun Tahiliani look she wears to the premiere of Homebound is compared to the colour of his couch, and her jewellery to "sau-rupaiya Sarojini Nagar" fare. Businesswoman and fashion queen Natasha Poonawalla's archival John Galliano ensemble is pronounced "burnable". There just isn't enough popcorn in the world for this.

Motiwala compared the colour of Janhvi Kapoor's Tarun Tahiliani ensemble at the Cannes premiere of Homebound to the colour of his couch, and her jewellery to "sau-rupaiya Sarojini Nagar" fare; Asked who the best dressed at the Cannes was, Motiwala says, "Aishwarya Rai Bachchan in this Manish Malhotra moment, with the sindoor and the drama. I'm going to give her 10s across the board" (Pics/Getty Images)

It makes us curious, though; who is Motiwala when he's not in front of the camera, dissing the sartorial choices of the country's most famous personalities?
"I'm a mess," he says with disarming candour, as he sweeps his hair to the side and sashays to the couch in his all-black outfit: a t-shirt custom-made by a friend, jeans from the Jean-Michel Basquiat x H&M collection, and a Marc Jacobs bag.

"Being perfect is so boring. I'd rather be messy, make mistakes and grow from them."

Sufi Motiwala in his signature "all-black" look; a t-shirt made by a friend, jeans from the Jean-Michel Basquiat x H&M collection, and a Marc Jacobs bag. Pic/Ashish Raje

Messy pays. We're not the only ones who can't get enough of this the Gen Z creator who burst onto the scene three years ago with his hot takes on celeb fashion. Armed with his trademark snark, he has grown a following of 3.6 lakh on Instagram. In the past month alone, his Met Gala and Cannes fashion reviews have been viewed over 20 crore times.

Perhaps it's because he says out loud what we secretly think. Like his take on model Ruchi Gujjar's bizarre necklace with Prime Minister Narendra Modi's photo displayed "across her bosom" . "If I wanted to pay homage to the PM, that's not where I'd put his photo," he snickers.

He's among a wave of new-age creators who have wrested fashion discourse from the grasp of editorial magazines and taken it to the masses. "My main goal is to make fashion digestible and funny for everybody," he adds, "I want the chacha selling vada pav on the street to watch a Hindi reel of mine and giggle."

The line between funny and mean can be blurry, though, and not everyone appreciates his humour. In April, he rated lifestyle content creator Manav Chhabra zero on 10 for wearing a Lakers jersey to the Coachella music festival in the US. The latter shot back calling him bald and a clown.

Motiwala says he's careful to limit his critique to the clothes. "Even if I say, ‘Didi, aapke saree pe fungus hai', I add that these are all beautiful people, I'm just talking about the outfit. If someone thinks my outfit is ugly, I don't feel the need to call them bald or joker. Why take it personally?"

Sometimes it's fans who react badly when their favourite star's style is picked apart, like when Motiwala called Shah Rukh Khan's all-black Sabyasachi look at his Met Gala debut on May 5 "pathetic".

"I don't put celebrities on a pedestal. It's just fashion, baby; we're not saving lives. Actors make crores for each movie; if I hate their outfit, that's hardly tragic," says the critic.

What he didn't anticipate was attacks on his own style. "Early in my career, people would say to me, ‘What are you wearing? How are you qualified to comment on people's outfits when you look like that?' At first, I used to feel bad about myself. Now it just puzzles me, because I don't have even one per cent of the resources celebrities do."

When he first started this journey in 2022 - on a dare from a friend - he was still a first-year Fashion Communications student. He has since dropped out, to make space for dreams that are bigger than our phone screens. "I've put academics on hold because life has granted all my dreams in the same year. I can't talk about it right now, but I'm a huge fan of reality TV and OTT shows and never thought I'd get an opportunity to be part of either before this," he hints.

The flipside of his success, he admits, is the extra scrutiny he is under. "Now I try to find the right tongue-in-cheek quip to convey that a look is bad without being harsh to the person. If I blindly say something good about them, people will say I'm a sell-out," says the Gen Z influencer.

And what would his life have looked like if his Instagram career hadn't soared? A magazine journalist, perhaps? "No, I don't think so - fashion magazines are losing their magic. Now a chappal brand can also give money and be on the cover. That's pedestrian, honestly. Where's the fashion?"

"They [magazines] look down on me as a random gay guy trying to talk about fashion. I started as a Surat boy who knew nothing but loved fashion. And now I've sat on the front row of every fashion show in India. So I feel like, you know what, I can be on the same level as Vogue if I want to be."

It's been a year of intense growth for him, and not just on the career front. "When I had first begun, I was in a very rough space in life with college and family. In 2024, a lot of my displaced emotions showed up in my content, and I was way harsher. Now I am in therapy, and am trying to be rational and kind," he says.

"I'm 21, but I hold the courage to grow up in front of the camera," he adds, "I can tell you this though, you haven't seen the best of me yet. You've only met Sufi Motiwala, the person I created for your consumption. You are yet to meet Sufiyan. So just wait and watch."

‘Not biased towards the Ambanis'

On Reddit, fashion threads are abuzz with claims that Sufi Motiwala only gives good reviews to a chosen few, like the Ambani family. "I find it so annoying when people say I'm biased towards the Ambanis," he says. "Pull up any of the looks they did for the Ambani wedding - Nita Ambani's brat green saree by Manish Malhotra, or her Judith Leiber bags. Where is the fault? Radhika Merchant got married in a Jayasri Burman painting [on the lehenga]; which other Indian celebrity even bothers to reference an artist? And when Shloka Ambani wore a Manish Malhotra that was a bit wonky, I did point that out. But those moments
are very rare; they don't flop that much."

‘Don't want to be remembered for one mistake'

On Friday, trailers of a new reality show, The Traitors, dropped online and set tongues wagging. The reason? Sufi Motiwala and Internet personality Uorfi Javed appear on the show together. This comes after their spat last year, when she called him out over a "disgusting" message that he says he sent to her by mistake on Instagram.

"That message was never meant for her; it was for my assistant. Mistakes happen. I apologised to her. I'm sure it must have felt horrible to receive a message like that, but I feel like I deserve the benefit of doubt," he says.

"I would just like to remind everybody that Uorfi and I used to be friends. I met her when I was 19 at an Amit Aggarwal event, and she asked me to give her outfit a 10 out of 10."

"I think we all deserve to move on. And I would just like for the audience to not remember me by the one small mistake that I made in my career," he concludes.