The Beauty Community vs. Intellectual Property: A Dupe Dilemma
Spend five minutes scrolling through TikTok, Instagram, or (insert favorite social media here), and you’ll be bombarded with ads for dupes. For the uninitiated, “dupes” are products that closely resemble pricier counterparts in look or quality but don’t outright claim to be the original. Unlike counterfeits, dupes don’t deceive consumers about their origin — yet they still exist in a murky ethical space. Once upon a time, the beauty community rejected such products outright, but today? It’s a free-for-all, and this evolution mirrors the broader struggle governments face when trying to define and enforce intellectual property (IP) laws.
The Beauty Drama: Who Copied Whom?
Five years ago, the influencer space had a much stricter stance on copying. Take Jeffree Star, a YouTube powerhouse with over 15 million subscribers. When Huda Beauty launched an eyeshadow palette that bore a striking resemblance to one from ColourPop, Star wasted no time calling it out. Huda Beauty is no stranger to such accusations of copying; most recently, the company was blamed for copying Beauty Bakerie, a small indie brand that ultimately shut down.
But here’s the problem: In creative industries, everything is derivative. Where does inspiration end and copying begin? The beauty industry’s IP dilemmas get even more tangled when you try to track down who actually came up with a concept first.
Consider the case of MannyMUA, another major YouTube beauty influencer. In 2018, he released an eyeshadow palette under his brand, Lunar Beauty, only to be accused of borrowing heavily from Sugarpill. Fast forward to 2020, and Manny found himself on the other side of the controversy, accusing Makeup Revolution of copying his packaging. The irony? That same year, he poked fun at drama surrounding claims that ColourPop had ripped off his witch-themed palette with their Hocus Pocus collab.
The reality is that there are only so many color combinations, only so many ways to arrange them in a palette, and eventually, everything starts looking the same. But that hasn’t stopped influencers from drawing their own inconsistent lines in the sand. In a recent video, MannyMUA attempted to categorize what counts as “fair” copying, suggesting that a big company duping a small indie brand is different from a big company copying another big company. But where do you draw that line? And more importantly — who gets to decide?
Beauty’s IP Problem is Everyone’s IP Problem
What’s happening in the beauty space isn’t unique — it’s just a glitter-coated version of the same IP struggles that governments have faced for centuries.
Historically, societies had vastly different views on ownership of ideas. In ancient times, creative works were thought to be divinely inspired, making the concept of individual ownership irrelevant. Later, copyright emerged — not as a protection of creativity, but quite literally as the right to make copies. Today, we have a complex web of protections covering everything from books to inventions to designs, all while recognizing that creativity thrives on inspiration.
As outlined in Reclaiming Fair Use, society benefits when people can draw from the cultural and creative works around them. Just ask Andy Warhol, DJs, or any artist remixing existing ideas. And yet, we also have an ingrained sense of fairness — people deserve credit for their work, right? This is why IP law is a constitutional pillar, designed to incentivize creativity and invenntion while ensuring protections eventually expire. Unlike physical property, IP isn’t forever, and that expiration creates inevitable messiness.
The Dupe Debate Reflects Broader IP Contradictions
Today’s beauty influencers aren’t just makeup moguls — they’re accidental philosophers wrestling with the same contradictions that legal scholars debate. If e.l.f. can openly dupe Charlotte Tilbury’s luxury products without backlash, does that mean some copying is okay? Why do influencers criticize some brands for “stealing” while celebrating others for making beauty more accessible? (look at e.l.f., Makeup Revoltuion, or MCoBeauty for examples)
The beauty community’s shifting stance on dupes is a microcosm of the larger debate about intellectual property — who owns ideas, for how long, and in what context? The fact that even our government hasn’t fully figured it out should make it no surprise that beauty influencers are struggling to define what’s fair, what’s theft, and what ultimately benefits society.
Like beauty, IP law is subjective. And as the beauty world has shown, drawing hard lines between inspiration and copying isn’t just difficult — it’s practically impossible. But hey, at least we get some good eyeshadow palettes out of the chaos.