Once relegated to drugstore beauty aisles and quietly traded tips on Reddit threads, dupes have entered the mainstream market with striking force – and they are not just popular, they are profitable. With viral lipsticks that look just like the ones they are targeting and $100 handbags that closely mirror luxury branded ones flooding marketplace platforms, retail outposts, and influencers’ social media feeds, dupes are reshaping how consumers define value – and forcing brands to rethink how they defend their designs in a market that is changing.
From Lookalike to Legitimate
The rise of dupe culture is more than a quirk of online shopping – it is a consumer shift with market-moving implications. Once framed as substitutes for those who could not afford the “real thing,” dupes are now hailed as smart alternatives in their own right. The growth of platforms like TikTok has fueled this shift, with viral content focused on comparing high-end products to their lower-cost counterparts, often with the conclusion that the cheaper product is “just as good.”
One need not look further than Charlotte Tilbury’s best-selling Pillow Talk lipstick for a case in point. Replicated by brands like e.l.f. and NYX, nearly identical shades have generated millions of views – and likely, sizable sales – under the #dupe hashtag. Or consider Lululemon’s Align leggings, a category-defining product that has inspired an avalanche of lookalikes from fast fashion and activewear brands, alike, with many replicating the buttery-soft fabric, high-rise cut, and logo-light aesthetic Lululemon helped popularize in athleisure.
In the luxury segment, the phenomenon is just as pronounced. Alaia’s mesh ballet flats, Bottega Veneta’s Andiamo bags, and Loro Piana Extra Pocket pouches have become viral must-haves in recent years – and within weeks, near-identical versions appeared across Amazon, Zara, and even direct-to-consumer sites marketing themselves explicitly as “dupe-friendly.” In most cases, the shape, texture, and styling were preserved but the logos or four-figure price tags were not.
These are not isolated examples. Instead, they are part of a larger trend: a consumer culture that increasingly values visual similarity over brand authenticity, and where the look itself has more social currency than the brand that made it.
The New Value Proposition: Access Over Allegiance
What is driving this shift in consumer behavior is not just price sensitivity – though that should not be overlooked – but by a fundamental recalibration of consumer values. In a content-saturated, algorithm-driven economy, aesthetic participation often matters more than ownership. The goal is not to possess the “original” item, but to copy the look convincingly enough to post, share, or style.
This has led to a quiet erosion of brand allegiance – especially among Gen Z and younger millennial consumers, who are less interested in what a brand name symbolizes and more focused on whether a product delivers the look for the price. That does not mean they are unaware of the original – quite the opposite. Dupe culture depends on reference points, but reverence for those originals is increasingly optional. In this context, the dupe is not a knockoff. It is a workaround – a means of bypassing exclusivity (and the brand identity/marketing messaging that brands are putting out) in favor of aesthetic access.
In a landscape where aesthetic similarity is good enough, and where consumers reward the look rather than the label, even the most carefully constructed brand narratives are no longer a guaranteed defense to dupes.
This presents both a commercial and legal challenge for established companies. At least some dupes do not cross the line into outright infringement, avoiding other brands’ logos, altering proportions of the products, or tweaking design details just enough to sidestep infringement allegations. And either way, from a commercial standpoint, these lookalike goods can siphon off consumer interest – especially when the distinction between original and inspired becomes less material to buyers. Over time, this threatens to undermine the very value proposition that many premium and luxury brands rely on.
A Cultural Rebrand of Imitation
The normalization of dupes is, in many ways, a cultural rebrand of imitation. Instead of being framed as unethical or embarrassing, buying copycat wares is now positioned as clever, economical, and even empowering. Influencers who promote dupes are not viewed as undermining the original; they are seen as doing their audience a favor. This framing plays into a broader skepticism of luxury brands, and in particular, their product quality and ever-rising price tags. In a time of economic uncertainty, many consumers are questioning whether $5,000 for a handbag or $60 for a lipstick can ever be justified – especially when an $18 version delivers 90 percent of the aesthetic impact for a fraction of the cost.
This shift also reflects the changing nature of aspiration itself. Where previous generations associated luxury goods with exclusivity and long-term investment, today’s consumers are often more interested in momentary visual impact – something that photographs well, trends quickly, and performs on social media. In this environment, the appearance of luxury often carries more weight than its provenance. A dupe that looks good on camera or earns algorithmic validation can offer the same social capital, if not more, than the original. In this way, the dupe becomes not a compromise, but a new kind of flex – one rooted in savvy consumption rather than traditional status.
Compounding this shift is the growing disillusionment with the luxury sector itself. Repeated investigations into opaque supply chains, labor abuses, environmental harm, and greenwashing have made many consumers more skeptical of what luxury brands claim to represent. When a $2,000 bag is discovered to be produced under conditions no more ethical than its $60 lookalike – or when a “sustainably made” capsule collection is quietly linked to unsustainable sourcing – the moral distinction between the original and the dupe begins to erode.
For a generation attuned to brand hypocrisy and social justice, the idea that price equals principle no longer holds. In many cases, the dupe feels not only financially sensible, but ethically neutral – or even preferable.
THE TAKEAWAY: Dupes are not just a cultural curiosity – they are a market force, one that is increasingly difficult for brands to ignore. They blur the boundaries between homage and infringement, authenticity and access, and have upended traditional notions of brand value. For a growing segment of consumers, the “big deal” is not who made a product – it is whether they can get the look, fast and affordably. And as long as aesthetic access continues to outpace brand allegiance, the dupe economy will keep growing – whether the brands it borrows from like it or not.
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