Knock It Off!

For designers, getting copied is devastating, but not necessarily illegal. Mia Sato dives into the world of dupes—knockoffs of a skort made famous by Taylor Swift, for instance, and Walmart Birkins, or “Wirkins”—to illuminate the precarity of ownership in an era of unprecedented mass consumption:

Marketing a product as a dupe has a powerful effect: descriptions like “alternative” or “imitation” just don’t have the same pull. A dupe shouldn’t just be less expensive than the apparent original—it also must be an adequate substitute, whether that means they look the same, feel the same, or do (roughly) the same thing. The buyer doesn’t want to simply get a good deal; they want to feel like they stumbled into a secret, like they pulled a fast one on the companies charging more than what’s right.

“[The thinking is] a little bit of an ‘I deserve it,’” Alexandra J. Roberts, a professor at Northeastern University School of Law who has written about the dupes market, says. “‘It’s not my fault the economy is the way it is, and if I want nice things, I should be able to get them and get them cheap.’”

Some industries, like beauty, have a long tradition of churning out similar (sometimes cheaper) products, and for good reason: favorite lipstick shades get discontinued, formulas get reworked, and some products don’t work for all skin types. In post-WWII Japan, craftsmen and fashion lovers meticulously re-created American garments brought over by soldiers that were out of reach for young shoppers. Some have argued that Japanese brands iterated on—and then perfected—Americana style.

Now dupes have spread to just about every industry imaginable, and they aren’t just comparisons created by shoppers; Roberts notes that brands and retailers have called their products “dupes” as a promotional tactic. (Here’s Whole Foods’ TikTok account calling its house-brand foods “dupes,” for example.) But there’s a word-of-mouth quality pervasive in dupe content—“I saw someone else post about this viral dupe” is a common opening hook to videos that have racked up millions of views online. Dupe content is so popular that simply posting about potential alternatives can be a whole career for influencers. Take the curious case of two Amazon influencers engaged in a bitter legal fight over allegations of unlawful copying: both women regularly promote products that are look-alikes for higher-end items. They earn a commission each time a viewer purchases an item through their affiliate links, whether that’s a handbag “inspired” by a luxury version or sofas designed to mimic a style popular among the ultra-wealthy. They profit off the veneer of a lifestyle—and a house full—of opulence, while accusing the other of biting their vibe. It’s not just that the products they push are often diluted versions of an original; even the influencers themselves are basically dupes, an endless game of telephone that carries, copies, and eventually distorts and replaces the original reference or design.