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The Issue With Consumerism: How Dupes Highlight a Growing Problem in Fashion

Written by: Chloe Pisani

October 25, 2024

If you’ve been on fashion TikTok at all within the past couple of months, you have undoubtedly seen the Frye Campus boots—the it shoes of fall ‘24. To the majority of people, the $500 price tag seems absurd, and yet every influencer seems to have these boots. Frye’s website touts the hand-crafted nature of the boots and their high-quality leather, which explains such a high price. However, what are people supposed to do when they want to participate in the trend, but can’t pay for the real deal?


Fast fashion companies such as Target have created a solution by making a “dupe” of the popular shoe. Unlike the original, Target’s version only retails for about $50 and is made from fake, plastic-based leather. This dupe has sparked controversy online as some creators are discouraging people from buying the cheaper and less sustainable version, while others say that dupes are often the only thing that some people can afford. So which opinion holds true?


In order to have this conversation we need to define what a “dupe” actually is. The word dupe, a shorthand for “duplicate,” traditionally carries two meanings: duplicate and deceive. In the modern context of social media, these two definitions have been brought together to refer to an item that replicates the main characteristics and functions of another more expensive item, and it is often offered at a lower price. Unlike a counterfeit, a dupe is not illegal since only brand identities, such as logos and trademarks, are legally protected, not the designs of clothing or accessories.


While dupes are legally acceptable, some in the fashion community question their ethics; many see dupes as stealing designs. There are some obvious cases of design theft such as the House of Sunny Hockney Dress which went tremendously viral in 2020. During its popularity, there were countless dresses that ripped off the Hockney Dress’ recognizable green oval pattern and managed to fly under the radar of legal trouble by changing things like hem length or strap width. Altering a piece just enough to be barely noticeable by the untrained eye is a strategy dupe designers employ to avoid infringing intellectual property,


Most dupes, however, are not clear knockoffs. Take the Micro Mini Stretch Skirt from Danielle Guzio for example. People all over TikTok are trying to find a dupe for it, but it’s impossible to tell if any of the skirts that people claim are dupes were actually created based on the Danielle Guzio skirt since it's just a plain-colored, stretchy mini skirt.  A lot of dupes are similarly ambiguous as a result of being labeled as such by consumers and not the brands that make them.  This is an element that makes the conversation around dupes so confusing.


Now that influencers make money from their Amazon Storefronts, LTK, and affiliate links, part of their job is advertising products. An easy way to do that in today’s time of economic uncertainty is by labeling everything as a dupe. People might not want to spend their money on a random mini skirt from Amazon, but if their favorite Instagramer swears it’s just like a skirt from a luxury brand that they trust, it seems like a must-have. It’s become advantageous for people to grant the dupe label to just about any affordable product that happens to share qualities with a more expensive one.


Another common argument against dupes is that they are worse for the environment than their luxury counterparts. This is partly true since dupes, like almost all fast fashion items, are made poorly with low-quality materials, making them more likely to deteriorate at rapid speeds. However, many luxury brands use similar production practices as fast fashion brands. For example, Remake’s Fashion Accountability Report 2024 ranked Chanel, a luxury brand, lower in sustainability than Shein, a fast-fashion brand notorious for duping.


When Remake released a similar report for 2022, it became a topic of internet discussion. Consumers expressed that they felt lied to, especially because even the most sustainable brand only received a score of 40 out of 150 possible points. If every single clothing company is doing varying levels of terrible in terms of workers and the environment, then who cares if my shirt costs $15 instead of $500? This is a sentiment shared by scores of disillusioned social media users who realized that sustainability is more of a marketing ploy to sell more goods than a promise to do better.


The morals and ethics of dupes are very gray and inconsistent, but it's clear that in some cases dupes are a genuine problem. When a design is stolen from a small designer and recreated using cheaper materials and harmful labor practices, it’s obviously harmful to the designer, customers, environment, and workers.

Marcelo Gaia, the designer of Mirror Palais speaks on his brand’s TikTok page about being helpless against dupes as a small designer. He expresses in one video that he feels “somewhat responsible” for the “misery” of those in sweatshops making dupes from his ideas. In another, he writes that when people buy or make knockoffs, “people mindlessly tear your dreams into little shreds.” Gaia’s point of view reminds us that behind every design is a person who put their love and hard work into it, and that should be respected I see this issue not as isolated but as a symptom of a larger problem: fast fashion and micro trends. With social media, we live in a world where we are presented with hundreds of different shoes, clothes, bags, and jewelry on a daily basis. What is trending seems to change with every swipe, like, or follow. With that, every month there’s a specific item that gains extraordinary popularity overnight—whether it be the Frye Campus boots or the Hockney Dress. When these expensive items rise in popularity, people want them immediately despite lacking the funds to afford them. As a result, people buy dupes.


The fast fashion business model is to design and manufacture pieces rapidly enough to release multiple collections per season. This puts them in the perfect position to provide sought-after, trendy designs immediately. Just like fast fashion has become trendy—with thousand-dollar Shein hauls going viral—duping has also become a trend within itself.


This cycle of trends coming in and out of fashion in an endless cycle is the root cause of the creation of harmful dupes. Many people have come to see clothes as disposable, wearing them only once or twice before discarding them.


The problem is not with those who buy a dupe every so often because they really love a piece but can’t afford the original. You’re doing far more for the planet if you make a few fast fashion pieces last for years, than if you buy clothes marketed as sustainable and wear them once.  No matter where our clothes come from, it’s our duty to ensure that a piece is worn to its full potential before it goes to the dump. This includes mending it to prolong its life and upcycling. So go ahead and buy a dupe if you want to because most of us can’t spend hundreds of dollars on every piece of clothing we own, but think before you buy it, wear it often, and cherish it.

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