Dupe Culture in Beauty is Ruining Everything
Gatekeeping is fine, actually.
The past two weeks have had a few different beauty stories I’ve been ruminating on. They aren’t big ones, but they speak to my particular fancies in the industry at large: nails and fragrance. Come for the gossip, stay for the breakdown of protecting originality in beauty. Let’s get to it:
On Nails:
A few different nail artists in New York and in Los Angeles have begun speaking out regarding artistic theft by other artists in their communities. The first: KKOHT Nails based in LA. In her case, I do find the side-by-side comparisons and the fact the other person is a former client rather telling. KKOHT is doing very memorable unique work compared to a lot of North American based nail artists. Korean nail are spearheading this particular style, shape, color story in South Korea and here as well. They look more like little watercolor tiles than Western nails, if I had to summarize the difference - a difference that is to me, a nail girlie, immediately recognizable.
There have been other artists accusing former colleagues of artistic imitation as well based on stylistic similarities regularly, but I won’t blow them up because the evidence isn’t as clear-cut. What is fascinating about nail trends to me is often how hard it is to pin down originators because of how viral and replicated ideas can be in the industry. Plenty of nail salons entire output are endless variations of Pinterest-sourced nail art - like, say, #funnybunnynails. Two coats Funny Bunny, one coat Bubble bath - an order that haunts nail technicians in their sleep, probably. It’s pretty easy to point out heavily blinged out nails have been a Black Beauty Original since the 1980’s, if not even sooner. This piece on Copyright and Nail Art goes deeper into how catty the nail art world can be - and ultimately, how complicated. I could truly talk forever about nail art and originality….
Unrelated to specific drama, I was excited to check out the ACRYLICS exhibition soon in NYC. It thrills me to see more archives around nail artistry becoming available.
On Fragrance:
Independent Perfumers are pushing back against dupe manufacturers and their associated companies. There is SO much messy drama going around here, and I will summarize it by saying a specific company is in hot water for offering dupe versions of not just discontinued fragrances but currently-in-existence independent perfumes, too. Instead of truly apologizing they’ve attacked people on their socials for taking them to task. They’ve spent days doubling down on being rude to people concerned about the practice on their IG and then bragged their sales have gone up from the drama of it.
This does make me think of the framing of a different, more well-known perfume “dupe” brand Dossier Perfumes, for whom replicating original smells for a lower price point is the entire business model of their brand. They seek to make perfume accessible to all, and that access to “premium fragrance shouldn’t just be for the 1%" but for all”. Making beautiful things accessible to more people is a very admirable mission, and one contradictory to the origins of perfume’s roots. Colognes and perfumes were really meant to help delineate classes historically. What keeps Dossier out of hot water (for now) is that they are only replicating - sorry, referencing - large perfume house smells:
MFK? Owned by LVMH. YSL? Kering. Killian? Estee Lauder Companies. Carolina Herrera’s Fragrances are 100% owned by Puig. Creed is owned by Kering. This entire list of this list is a variation of these conglomerates, with the exception of Juliette Has a Gun’s ownership (though they’ve raised funding from venture capitalists, it is still technically owned by Nina Ricci’s great-grandson, Romano Ricci. Altogether, the pattern of Dossier’s “inspiration” is that they stick to making versions of very, very popular, commercially available perfumes. Just Tom Ford valuation alone is $2.3 Billion. They’re not riffing off small businesses but the big boys pretty exclusively.
So do I think Dossier’s approach is more admirable?
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