There’s a TikTok that keeps reappearing in various forms across your for you page: someone compares the £12 e.l.f Halo Glow next to the original £40 Charlotte Tilbury Hollywood Flawless Filter, swatches both on each side of their face, and asks the viewers whether they can actually tell the difference between the two products. The comments are always filled with the same mix: people tagging their friends, people claiming that the cheaper alternative is not only an alternative, but a better option, and at least one person insisting that the original product is ‘just better’ without quite being able to back up their argument.
So what is actually going on here? Dupe culture - the trend of proudly seeking out cheaper and more accessible alternatives to premium goods - looks like a rational, straightforward response to an ongoing cost of living crisis. But it raised a more interesting question to me as I scrolled: if two products are functionally identical, why does one cost over triple the other? And why have we as a society just accepted this for years?
Before exploring this further, it is worth being precise about what I’m referring to - because not all cheap alternatives are the same thing, and this distinction matters both economically, but also legally.
A dupe is a product inspired by a premium original, similar in its looks and functions, but doesn’t claim to be the original product. The £12 skin tint doesn’t pretend to be Charlotte Tilbury - it just does a similar job for a small fraction of the price. On the other hand, a counterfeit is a deliberate imitation product designed to deceive the consumers using fake branding and fake logos, making it illegal. In the middle of the two is a knockoff, which is a looser, more informal term which can describe either extreme depending on the context. Legally, buying a dupe is different from buying a fake, however economically, dupes and counterfeits are responses to the same underlying problem: some products cost far more than the total costs of production. The idea that fills the gap between the cost of production and what consumers pay is branding, status, and perception.
So why do consumers buy these dupes? The answer that first comes to mind is the price. Dupe culture is an example of the substitution effect in real time, where as the price of the luxury good rises, consumers will look for alternatives that give them very similar utility. Furthermore, the goods that are duped tend to have high income elasticity of demand, so as people’s income changes, the demand for these luxury goods rises and falls sharply. Periods of low growth, like we are seeing now, alongside a cost of living crisis doesn’t just make people more frugal, it actively pushes the consumers towards the dupe market.
However, some luxury goods don’t apply to this general trend. These special category of luxury goods are bought as a result of their high price - called Veblen goods. Veblen goods are products where the high price tag itself is the point of why consumers purchase the goods as they signal wealth and status to everyone around them. A common example of a Veblen good is Hermes’s Birkin bag, where the ownership isn’t just common ownership of any good; it’s a public statement. This means that the dupe Birkin isn’t just a cheaper alternative, it’s an attempt to borrow that signal without paying for it as these consumers get the aesthetic, the status, the association, at a fraction of the cost. Dupe culture exposes the gap between a product’s functional value and its perceived value, which is constructed almost entirely by branding. The manufacturing cost of a standard Birkin is estimated to be between $800 and $1400 (link), however, the retail price in store is about $12000. In addition to this, Hermes has a notorious loyalty scheme, where one usually has to display brand loyalty through multiple previous purchases to be offered the chance to buy a Birkin, and most of the time the consumer will not be offered a bag initially on their wish list - proof that people are willing to do anything for the status of the Birkin.
Now that we have analysed the demand side of dupe culture and why consumers buy dupes, we will analyse the supply side of the market and why the market is so eager to provide dupes. Producing dupes are an attractive proposition to many firms as they don’t have to deal with many timely issues such as design costs, years of brand-building, and no expensive flagship stores on the most expensive streets in the world. Companies like Shein and Zara have built business empires by using a simple model around identifying what’s trending, often within days of an idea going viral or appearing on a runway, and these businesses manage to get a cheaper version into production almost immediately. The barriers to entry for producing dupes are significantly lower than for luxury brands, making the market much more competitive on the dupe end of the market.
The speed at which these firms work at is key. Fast fashion firms operate on a fundamentally different cost structure to luxury firms: prioritising lower costs of production through lower material costs, cheaper labour, and shorter supply chains to cut prices without sacrificing the look - existing as profit-maximising giants as they identify the gap in the luxury market and exploit it efficiently. The rise of firms aiming to create dupes results in a negative effect that the luxury brands didn’t anticipate. Through making their products aspirational to the everyday consumer, desirable only because most can’t afford them, the luxury brands also made themselves worth copying.
Luxury brands operate in monopolistic competition, a market with many firms selling differentiated products, however the most powerful luxury brands push towards something closer to brand monopoly. For example, you cannot buy an authentic Lady Dior from any other brand than Dior; the exclusivity is the product. Dupe culture erodes the exclusivity of luxury brands by not replicating the product exactly, but through offering a close enough substitute that the monopolistic power that the brand holds diminishes. The more convincing the dupe, the more competitive the market becomes, making it harder for luxury firms to justify their pricing on anything other than the brand name itself.
Platforms like TikTok and Instagram act as the engine to dupe culture; they have collapsed the distance between aspiration and information. Five years ago, it was very difficult to find a cheaper alternative to a luxury good without having to visit direct counterfeits institutions such as Canal Street. Now, the dupe is often in the comments section of the original product, making dupe culture spread rapidly.
TikTok in particular has normalised the hunt for dupes, accelerating the substitution effect on a massive scale as the ‘dupe’ hashtag has millions of views, and finding a convincing due has become a trend in itself. Luxury brands are no longer just competing with each other, they’re competing with algorithmically-powered, user-generated alternative markets that update constantly. However, dupe culture gives visibility to the original brands on social media, keeping them culturally relevant. Dupe culture almost acts as free marketing for the luxury brands, sustaining the aspiration that makes both the original and the copy desirable.
So are dupes good or bad? The case for dupes are compelling on the surface. Lower prices, greater choice, and increased accessibility all point towards higher consumer welfare. Fashion and beauty have always been industries where look trumps all, and exclude most of the population. Dupe culture lowers the barrier and opens access to the general public.
However, the counter-arguments are harder to dismiss. If competitors can replicate a firm’s output almost immediately at a fraction of the cost, the reward for innovation falls, discouraging innovation. Furthermore, legal dupes also raise major ethical issues - the cost savings often come from lower wages, worse conditions, or cheaper materials with higher environmental costs. Dupes represent the trade off between more accessible markets on one side, but at the cost of weakened innovation incentives and murkier ethical ground.
Written by Emily Jong