Ostensibly, the dupe shopper’s goal is to save money on expensive products, but scrolling through the hashtag on TikTok, most dupes are for products that rarely surpass $100. What’s weirder is that now there are knockoffs of knockoffs. As another lawyer put it: “Nobody wants to be like, ‘Yeah, I got this awesome knockoff.’ But ‘I got this great dupe’ - you sound savvy.” The term dupe “has less negative emotional baggage than counterfeit or knockoff even though the word encapsulates counterfeit goods and products that look like other products,” an IP lawyer tells me. Of course, many of these dupes are just knockoffs, though no one wants to call them that. Other dupes, like super-fake designer handbags, take some know-how or - if you’re okay with a crappy copy - an understanding of how online marketplaces like work. It’s easy to procure dupes of some luxury products, such as these globular Bottega Veneta earrings. Soon, dupes took over clothing, shoes, and home goods - items without ingredient lists. One former influencer remembers Lululemon’s $100 Align leggings, released in 2015, as the first non-cosmetic item to get widely duped. It wasn’t long before the concept caught on more broadly. When the first wave of beauty YouTubers in the 2010s started making tutorials, they made accompanying dupe videos, too. “People would say, ‘If you can’t afford the M.A.C 239 brush, get the Sigma 239 brush,’” Mielke says. The definition of dupe as a cheaper alternative came a little later, around the 2008 recession. Dupe as a term “just kind of caught on,” says Christine Mielke, a longtime beauty influencer and founder of Temptalia, a beauty-product review site that has been curating a “Dupe List” for the past 13 years. There were far fewer cosmetic brands then, and people wanted products that resembled sold-out, limited-edition, or discontinued products from M.A.C, which was the brand everyone was buying at the time. When the word dupe emerged from the cosmetics world in the early 2000s, it just meant duplicate. This is Peak Dupe, when the basic rules of spending and quality no longer apply. Today, the dupe itself is more valuable than the original, and the quality alternatives have been eclipsed by a tsunami of trash. But as dupes have taken on a life of their own, all sense of what makes a good one seems to have been lost. Influencers have built enormous followings shilling dupe recommendations in every product category, from makeup to electronics to food, and when a dupe goes viral, both it and the original product often sell out. On TikTok, the hashtag and its mutations - doupe, doup, doop, give or take a few vowels - have amassed billions of views, comments, and likes. Not too long ago, my search might have been successful, back when dupe was still a catchall term for earnest, money-saving product recommendations. The glass is distorted, and when I stand in front of it, I look like I’m in a fun house. I was about to check out when I realized the item in my cart was an inch tall - a creepy little dollhouse mirror! Other videos suggested I make the mirror for $20 before lobbing me back to Amazon, where I finally bought a dupe from the affiliate page of someone named Juliana, who has 2 million followers. An influencer sent me to Amazon, where the mirror was available for $125.99. The Lowe’s version was $175 without molding (so just a regular mirror?).
The most popular video recommended one from Sam’s Club for $150, but it was sold out. I couldn’t afford the real thing, so I followed one commenter’s advice and searched for a dupe - a cheaper alternative that should, in theory, look as good as the original for a fraction of the price.Ī brief search on TikTok revealed dozens of Gleaming Primrose dupes. And yet the moment I saw it on TikTok, I was possessed by the overwhelming urge to own it immediately.
Bordered in faux gold and crowned with Baroque molding, Anthropologie’s Gleaming Primrose Mirror is seven feet tall and costs $1,600. In retrospect, the mirror was always ridiculous.
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