Dupes became the biggest shopping trend in 2023. A dupe (duplicate) is a fairly similar but much more affordable alternative to an expensive brand. In 2023, the number of Google searches for the word “dupe” has set a new record. More than a third of Norway’s population between 15 and 25 have bought dupes in the past year. Dupes is about making a good deal, but also about being on top of the rapidly changing online trends. Making smart discoveries, defining luxury one can afford. The Internet is full of makeup dupes… Illustration: Dupeshop …for trendy designer clothes and shoes… Illustration: brittanykrystle.com …and for perfumes. But dupes also exist for more practical items… Illustration: scentmovement.com …like the super popular (and expensive) Dyson handheld vacuum cleaner. Illustration: shopltk.com It used to be shameful to have fake branded clothes/things. Now that can be downright cool. What happened? The dream of a shiny face By Akerselva in the middle of Oslo is the popular Elvebakken high school. Second class has project work; it’s Friday, the atmosphere is good and the make-up bags are open. Among the most popular dupes we find perfume and cosmetics. At Elvebakken, they wonder if the dupes actually have an interest in the news; it has been there forever, at least since secondary school. – I have one up here, me! A “Black Opium” dupe. It’s an old perfume classic, says Karla, rummaging in her bag. The bag itself was bought on the website AliExpress (known for replicas of variable quality). It doesn’t have the Stella McCartney logo on it, it just looks like the designer bag. It is much more common to see dupes of this bag than the original (which costs around NOK 11,000), the girls say. The difference between dupes and fakes/pirated copies This can be difficult material to navigate, but here is an attempt at clarification. First: It is not illegal to buy dupes. An alternative to an expensive product is not about exploiting someone else’s brand. A pirated copy, on the other hand, is: It is a product that pretends to be the original (a Nike shoe with a logo and an identical design, for example). Pirated copies can also be called fakes. A survey in the EU shows that 50 per cent in the age group 15–24 think it is OK to buy pirated copies when the price of the original product is too high. The dupes trend can help to blur the distinctions between alternative goods and pirated copies, the Patent Office believes. The Norwegian authorities are behind the website volgekte.no, where you can learn more about piracy and what is illegal in counterfeit brands. (Source: The Swedish Patent Office) WITHIN THE BUDGET: On the left Karla’s bag, which you can find from approx. NOK 200 on AliExpress. On the right, the original “Falabella shaggy deer big tote bag”. The perfume Karla took out is from the store Normal. The Danish store chain is central to the spread of dupes in Norway. When Normal recently opened a branch in Volda in Sunnmøre, there was a notice in the local newspaper. Facsimile: Møre-Nytt As long as the quality is OK, the name of the box with the make-up inside is the same, several of them believe. – You don’t have the Chanel logo on your face, somehow. A good example is the make-up product Hollywood Flawless Filter from Charlotte Tilbury. We are talking about a smoothing, thin cream that gives an unmistakable shine to the face. (Look out at the next opportunity: Many girls are currently shimmering, especially over the cheekbones and nose.) Just over a year ago, the “flawless filter” cream went viral on TikTok. Everyone wanted this effect! But the British brand is expensive. The internet’s make-up army rolled up their sleeves and found great alternatives. – I remember that influencer Cecilia Teigen tested one of the dupes for “flawless filter”. It was made by Maybeline, which is also a pretty good brand. The quality has something to say for a dupe to become popular, explains Molly Maria Solberg Dudek. COMMON KNOWLEDGE: Molly Maria and the others are not particularly concerned with dupes, according to themselves, but they know more than anyone I’ve spoken to before. Dupes are also part of the mechanism that can create a career on the internet. The influencer and the pocket money 22-year-old Cecilia Teigen has climbed rapidly as an influencer in Norway over the past two years. She became a teenager “when makeup was big on YouTube” and remembers dupes being a new word at the time. – It started with things where the packaging was similar, but the content was not as good. Now there are many more dupes that are actually good, she says. HOME OFFICE: This is where Cecilia Teigen makes many of her videos, including the series where she tests more affordable make-up. – I would never advertise a product without liking it myself, she says. Photo: Cecilia Teigen Teigen has been living as an influencer for a year. She receives money from various actors to front their products. The followers are mainly young girls, she responds to hundreds of messages every day. – If I only pushed “this is good” of what is expensive, I would have influenced them to want the expensive things. If you’re going to have this and that foundation that costs NOK 600 and you use it up… then you’re good to go, she says. – Are dupes a good or bad trend? – I think it’s good, especially for the young girls who don’t have the money to buy a lot of expensive things. It’s good that you don’t feel like you have to use your entire weekly salary to buy something. My job is to show a lot of different things, and it resonates differently, says Cecilia Teigen. By all means: It is not new that the wallet controls what we humans buy and which brands we choose, whether it is First Price juice rather than freshly squeezed or make-up from L’Oréal rather than Lancôme. The new thing is that the dupe itself is so hot. In some cases, the copy has become more sought after than the original. “The ordinary girl” Cecilia Teigen’s manager is called Vilde Kristine Darvik. She is creative manager at Max Social. – Dupes are big because of TikTok, she says. Already in April, videos with #dupe were seen 2.8 billion times on TikTok. On this platform, it is how many people finish watching a video that determines whether the video is pushed to more users. If the content hits, a previously unknown person can go viral. According to Darvik, there is one thing that trumps everything: credibility, credibility, credibility. – Influencers must be much more honest and genuine than just two years ago, explains Darvik. Photo: MaxSocial In that competition, the girl in the street actually has an advantage over supermodel Kendall Jenner (who this year started advertising for the low-cost brand L’Oréal.) A well-made video testing make-up dupes is a perfect storm: the target group is already interested . 65 percent of Norwegian girls who are on TikTok look at make-up and beauty content. The target group does not have the budget of a movie star or a Kardashian sister, but still wants to shine perfectly. Social media in general is more down in 2023. We’re more happy to see “regular girls” (more regular than Kylie and Kendall Jenner, anyway) and we can’t afford it. Vilde Kristine Darvik thinks it’s fun how the affordable alternatives assert themselves against expensive brands. As the “winner” in dupes for Charlotte Tilbury’s Hollywood Flawless Filter, elf branded its halo glow liquid filter. Illustration: dupeshop.com – In 2021, the Tilbury original was impossible to get hold of when I was in London. This year I found it easily, but didn’t want it, with the krone exchange rate it is far too expensive! But it was completely impossible to buy elf’s dupe, says Vilde Kristine Darvik and laughs. Dupes are cool, fakes are embarrassing Clara Julia Reich is a research fellow at SIFO. By interviewing children and young people from 10 to 14 years of age over the past couple of years, she has definitely learned the word dupes. – Following trends is important to them, they can feel pressure. They want to fit in, not stand out, she says. The vast majority of children Reich met were on TikTok, many started when they were 10–11. It is difficult for the youngest to distinguish between paid marketing and other videos when they see influencers, says the researcher. More than 1 in 3 young people have bought a product because it has gone viral on social media. The girls more than the boys (50 against 22 per cent). – Dupes are the biggest among the girls, but what about the boys? – On the eastern edge of Oslo, several boys were interested in “fakes”, which are pure brand copies. But it was embarrassing if someone else found out they had fakes. The girls were not embarrassed by their dupes, there is no hidden copying. Clara Julia Reich is divided in her view of the trend. – Dupes means that young people can buy goods without blowing their budget, and thus feel a sense of belonging. But the dupes trend can destroy designers who have spent a lot of time creating the original things, says the researcher. Dupes is about being ahead of the curve, navigating smartly as a trendy consumer. It can also make life a little… tiring. The eternal wish list Back in the classroom. Lydia shows off a white sequined dress with a bow at the back from H&M, which this autumn was the “party dress of the year”. The bow dress is now sold out in stores (where it cost NOK 599). It goes for up to NOK 2,000 on the recycling website Tise. DILLE: An H&M dress has more than doubled in price due to its popularity recently, Lydia explains. (NB: It is not necessarily trendy anymore when the article is published.) Photo: Ragnhild Laukholm Sandvik / news The feed constantly creates new desires. But do the girls get annoyed by constantly wanting things? I wonder. Yes, yes, maybe. – Wish lists never end. I’m getting tired, just have to stop wishing for things. It’s going to go on like this forever, sort of, says Molly Maria and sighs. Lately, Tiktokers have been sharing the best dupes to put on their #wishlist for Christmas. But Olea Christensen Reite noticed a while ago that life at high school required more money, and she has taken concrete action. – I am now four months clean! (She’s talking about TikTok). She clenches her fist in triumph. There are alternatives, also on the platform. Another trend in 2023 is so-called deinfluencing, i.e. people telling their followers that they don’t need to spend their money on this or that. Whether it is anti-consumption or dupes that will be the biggest in 2024 remains to be seen. *** More on the blurred distinction between pirated goods and dupes:
ttn-69
That’s why dupes are the big shopping trend in 2023 – Culture
