- This video is brought
to you by Squarespace, an all-in-one platform
for building your brand and growing your business online. Hello hello, my beautiful doves! My name is Mina. I make fashion, culture, and ... Media commentary videos. Usually when I'm not sick. So if you can hear some
like, nasally sounds, it's because I'm sick today. It's that time of the year again, AKA post fashion week, and everyone in the fashion industry knows that fashion weeks are like,
major super spreader events, and people inevitably get sick afterwards. So I just wanted to give that disclaimer in case you hear some like, sniffly ASMR. That's the reason. Okay, so today I wanna
talk about dupe culture. I've been actually wanting
to talk about dupe culture for a long time now. Like I even drafted like a podcast episode several months ago, and then I don't know what happened there, but I just didn't do it. But you know, my interest
in dupes was reignited because of a couple things
that happened to me last month. Happened to me, like, things that I saw on the internet. The first thing is that, last month, my TikTok For You page was
just full of Emily Mariko tote bag reaction videos. For the uninitiated, Emily Mariko is a pretty popular TikToker who posts a lot of cooking
blog type of videos, but I guess the main characteristic that differentiates her from like, others of the same niche, is that she rarely ever
talks in these videos, and the way that she presents herself is very like, minimalist that girl. (chopping sounds) Anyway, she released a tote
bag for sale a few weeks ago in two different colors, called
the Farmer's Market tote, and people were frankly appalled to see that these tote bags were $120. Emily defenders point out
that the Erewhon Traveler Bag, which looks similar,
costs even more at $138, and there's hardly any outrage about that, though not sure if we should
be using Erewhon prices as a standard. And they also claim that Emily has always been quite luxury adjacent and selling a cheap tote bag
would be off brand for her. Much of this discourse also
lent itself to dupe videos, where people featured similar products that cost a fraction of the price. For example, TikToker Basmah Masood did a quick Amazon search and found a similar tote bag available in twice as
many colors for only $16. But you know, what I really wanna know about this whole situation is, why did this tote bag release make everyone suddenly want to
buy a tote bag to begin with? Like, I think there are definitely different types of tote bags, and some of them do justify
a higher price point, like if they're made of leather, and have extra details or trimmings. Like if they're a generally nice bag in the shape of a tote. But a grocery store shopping tote bag, no zip top, cotton canvas. Do we all not have at least like, 10 of these under our sinks? I feel like the more common thing is like, how do I get rid of my tote bags? Well anyway, another related
thing I did in the past month was binge Singles Inferno, which
is this Korean dating show. I wanna say it's kind of like Love Island, but I've never seen Love Island. I just assume that it's
similar to Love Island. It's just like, hot people
that are stranded on an island and they have to like, match-make each other
by the end of the show. And some people do leave still single, because the person that they
like doesn't like them back. But yeah, the gist of the show is that you're supposed to find someone by the end of a week on
this deserted island. I only watched the first season because I try to put a cap
on reality TV for myself, but I have some friends
who've watched it all, and one of them told me
that after season one aired, the most popular girl, the diamond of this season, if you will, Song Ji-ah, was canceled, for wearing fake designer
clothing on the show. Like, literally canceled! She was edited out of an episode of this other variety
show called The Manager after the scandal broke out, and she had to issue a public
apology on social media, so it was pretty bad. The Instagram post that she posted, where her apology in, is now deleted, but this is what it said translated. "I apologize once again for all the circumstances
that have occurred due to infringing on designers' creations and ignorance of copyrights. As someone who has a dream
of launching a brand, I will seriously recognize and reflect on the controversial parts." While there were a bunch of people upset on behalf of these luxury brands, hence why Song Ji-ah was
pointing this out in her apology, Se-Woong Koo, editor
of Korean Exposé said, "Actually, the biggest crime alleged was that she was a fake, and that she pretended to be
something that she is not. That was the issue that kept being raised, time and time again. Her supposed rich background
is what made her attractive, not that she was a hardworking influencer, or that she was successful on her own and making a lot of money. People said they were following her because they thought
she was a gold spoon." For context, a gold
spoon is usually a child of a super rich family, like from the top 1% of
high income households in South Korea. So a lot of Song's fans liked her for her aspirational lifestyle, and so were disappointed to realize that it was inauthentic. It'd be kind of like if
Sophia Richie Grange, for some reason, which
is not even possible, because we literally
have so much information about her family. It's like if she admitted that like, everything she wore was fake and that she doesn't actually have money. People like her because she's rich. While I think the backlash
against Song Ji-ah was kind of harsh, though I'm not Korean, so what do I know? I just think it's interesting that for a long time, in America, there was at least some
sort of similar stigma tied to wearing fakes. - But staring into that trunk, they no longer look
like elegant Fendi bags. They just looked cheap. You know what? I don't think so. - But now it's sort of
like a positive thing to be able to find a dupe for
an existing expensive product, to the point where people like, are openly talking about it, and sharing dupes on social media, and even gaining a following for sharing dupes on social media. Of course there's still limits, but overall dupe culture
has really shifted in the last five years or so. So let's talk about it. (static) I've been a Squarespace
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Squarespace to set up a store if you have merch to sell, or subscription services to sell. It's all just like, super easy to set up, no HTML knowledge necessary. Check out squarespace.com
for a free trial, and when you're ready to launch, go to squarespace.com/minale to get 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. - One bag, two bag, three bag, four. - Bags bags bags.
- Five bags, six bags, seven bags more. Jesus Christ.
- Jesus Christ. - Just as a disclaimer, for this video, I decided not to go too deep into the exploitation of labor within the production
of making these dupes because I feel like I've
addressed fast fashion and all of that before. And for this video I really
wanted to just focus on the idea of design theft in general. But if you wanna look at
previous commentary I've made on fast fashion and labor
exploitation within fashion, my most recent video on
sweaters touches on it, and I did make an entire video
on SHEIN a couple years ago. A dupe or a knockoff is
a cheaper alternative, but very similar product. The dupe does not brand
itself as the actual product, and this is why dupes are typically legal, because they do not violate the intellectual property
rights of the original company, because they don't claim
to be the original product. Some people will call clothing items that are similar but not
identical, still dupes. So for instance, TikToker Erica Dowdy
mentioned a pair of pajamas that were an alternative for
the Djerf Avenue fruit pajamas. More on that later. And some people would call these a dupe, but because these pajamas
look totally different, I wouldn't consider them
dupes, just an alternative. Counterfeit good or replica is a blatant copy of an original product that uses the same logos
and tags, and is illegal, because they use another
company's trademarks. These are like the fake
Chanel bags with the monograms that are really difficult
to tell are fakes, unless you're an authenticator, or unless you're someone who
owns a lot of Chanel bags. A lot of people nowadays
interchangeably use all these words, which I think is why there's
so many contradictory takes about dupes on the internet. But for the sake of this video, we're going to respect these
initial legal definitions. But just because a knockoff or dupe doesn't have a logo on it doesn't mean there isn't
clear design theft. The Selkie dress knockoffs come to mind. But Greg Schatten, a New York based attorney in
the brand protection practice, at McCarter & English said, "without the trademark dimension, a knockoff case can be
much more challenging than a counterfeit case. Clothing or accessory designs are typically not covered
by copyright law." Yeah, you heard it here! The only things our
copyright law will protect with respect to clothes
are graphic designs, textile designs, and logos. They will not protect color, cut, or shape of the clothes. But even with these guidelines,
it's still confusing, because it's like, based
on a case by case basis. For example, the copyright office rejected Coach's registration application for a fabric design containing
a pattern consisting of two linked Cs facing each other, alternating with two unlinked Cs facing in the same direction. The reason being that
letters of the alphabet and the arrangements of that letter C were not sufficiently
creative or original enough, which is pretty like, crazy to me, because I feel like if I saw any other bag that had
this kind of pattern, I'd be like, "This is a Coach knockoff." This is so clearly tied
to the Coach brand, but the copyright law will not protect it. And I get why copyright won't
protect every design element, because if that were the case, designers would literally
not be able to put out, like, any new collections. Fashion is a very evolutionary medium, and a lot of designers will like, build their collections
off of other designers and find inspirations in that way. If for instance, like, high-rise jeans were copyrighted
by a particular brand, that would mean that that brand would be the only brand that
could produce high rise jeans, and that would just be so silly. But the flip side of this is that there are a lot of bad corporations that will blatantly steal
the entire product design of another brand, and there's just no way
to punish them for it. And despite counterfeit being illegal, it's still not easy to stop it. Many manufacturers are based offshore, so they're difficult to locate, and then, even if the
manufacturer is legitimate, they could be running a third shift that goes out the back door
to a friend or relative who runs the distribution
of counterfeit goods. And especially with
E-commerce and how easy it is for counterfeiters to jump
from platform to platform and switch to different hosts, it's just like this
endless cat and mouse game to issue cease and desist letters. Unfortunately, controlling
counterfeit has been a problem for a really long time, so I thought it'd be
fun just to look at like the early 20th century to see what that environment was
like, because you know, we love history on this channel. - Fake, fake, fake, fake. (canned laughter) - In the early 20th century, and maybe some people
would say still today, Paris was the epicenter of high fashion. The price for a couture dress, AKA dress that was made to measure, usually very intricate, and made from expensive fabrics, was very unaffordable
for the common person. So illegal copy houses attempted to recreate these couture dresses, and sell them at lower price points. In 1929, Lucian Klotz, Secretary General of
the Society of Authors and Artist Rights, estimated the number
of copy houses in Paris at more than 100. France, by the way, has stricter laws protecting
original fashion design. So, how were these copy houses able to reproduce couture gowns? Workers, intermediaries, and even clients themselves, could be paid off in exchange
for sketches, mockups, and original dresses. When I talk about clients, I mean like, there were some wealthy lady, well, I guess they weren't that wealthy, who would lend their original dresses to be borrowed by these copy houses so that they could, you know, make a pattern out of this dress, and they would pay a fee, but then they would give them
back those original dresses, and it was like, one
way that you could like, hustle and make a little
bit of income back from spending an
exorbitant amount of money on a particular dress. In 1931, workers and
models of couture houses could be paid an average
of 50 to 100 French francs for sneaking a new design out. (speaks foreign language) Not only was it bad that they were stealing creative property
from these couturiers, but copy houses were most
likely making more money too. It was a general thing that clients could pay
late for their purchases, because it was considered rude to chase up clients for money. And also, many clients
actually purposely paid late as a way of signaling their own prestige. But copy houses, on the other hand, required all transactions
to be immediate and in cash, because they were operating illegally and needed the sales to be
finalized as quickly as possible. The French couturier, Madeleine Vionnet, was very prolific in
suing anyone who dared to copy her designs. She also photographed all her models and put a date and serial
number on every picture, and started producing a label marked with her own thumbprint in order to authenticate
each of her creations. She was known for modifying her models at very short notice before openings, and for installing dyeing
facilities inside of her house that she would use to change the colors of the clothes she was planning to model, just like on a whim, to throw off copiers. Unfortunately, all this didn't
totally prevent copying, as we can see with this
unauthorized reproduction of her 1924 "little horses" dress. Coco Chanel had a bit
of a different attitude. Chanel was sometimes amused by the lengths people
would go to copy her, and in her American
perfume advertisements, Chanel played it as a joke, advertising herself as the quote, "Most copied and popular couturier, ardent sponsor of youth." Maybe part of the reason why she was more nonchalant with copiers was because she also sold her own fabrics, so she was able to at
least make some income off of people buying
her fabric to copy her. And there's at least one account of Chanel taking inspiration
from copiers as well. According to Marcel
Haedrich, who wrote his book, "Coco Chanel: Her life, her secrets", Chanel's Press Secretary
once bought a Chanel knockoff she saw someone selling in the street, for 50 francs, to show to her boss. It was a dress made of white
linen with braided trim, a detail that the
original actually lacked. Chanel took one look at
the raffia-like plaiting, and decided to use raffia
in her next collection. But not all copying was illegal. Beginning in the 1920s, foreign retailers would
buy couture designs that they would then use to create their own line of dresses,
usually for half the cost. The copying was regulated
by the Chambre Syndicale, which is the governing
body of French couture. Foreign retailers would
have to obtain buyers cards from the Chambre Syndicale, and pay on an advance on a purchase in order to gain entry
to the show's opening. However, despite these measures, some designers still felt
the Chambre Syndicale wasn't the most effective
at regulating copying. Cristóbal Balenciaga, for instance, was the first couturier to step outside the Chambre Syndicale system in 1956. (speaks foreign language) Rather than showing during
the official Paris shows with the rest of the couturiers, he put on two separate shows. The first was a private initial show for his clients and retail buyers, and then the second show
was hosted a month later, where fashion journalists were invited. Balenciaga did this because
he was getting annoyed with journalists publishing his designs, which then would lead
manufacturers and retailers to just copy the descriptions
and illustrations that they published of his clothes, without purchasing his
approved originals first. With this new system, he was able to get ahead of the press, and make some sales before getting duped. (speaks foreign language) So that's just the brief early history of counterfeit fashion. Nowadays, it seems way more
common for counterfeiters to recreate a designer bag than to recreate like, an
entire designer couture gown. But what's also interesting is that now, there are also respected designers who play with a theme of counterfeiting by duping other designers. For example, at his fall 2007 runway show, Yohji Yamamoto debuted
a newly created YY logo, that was very similar to
the Louis Vuitton monogram. No lawsuits were fired, however. But just because lawyers
don't get involved doesn't mean all designers are happy to be the inspiration for their peers, especially if there are
perceived minimal differences between the original and the dupe. For example, Oscar de
la Renta famously told the Times Magazine in 2002, "Recently I saw a photo
of a coat I made in 1967. It's a full length white
vinyl with scattered sequins. Three years ago, Marc Jacobs
made the identical coat." But Mr. De la Renta may not
be in the clear fully himself, as the critic Holly Brubeck even said that his fond relationship to
Yves Saint Laurent's designs probably warranted paying royalties. (indistinct) wrote of
the general situation for the LA Times. "Half of fashion, in fact, seems to owe its professional
existence to a single truism: one is as original as the
obscurity of one's source." - In 2002, Oscar de la
Renta did a collection of cerulean gowns, and then I think it was Yves
Saint Laurent, wasn't it? And then cerulean quickly
showed up in the collections of eight different designers. - Of course, nowadays with fast fashion, knockoffs have become more
common than ever before. In 2021, Vox reported that
ultra fast fashion giant SHEIN can copy a look and get it into production in less than a week. - That's like $3,000! - Or 150! Fake. - [Charlotte] Oh my god! - [Mina] In 2023, 61% of Gen
Zers said they use TikTok most often to find dupes. According to a survey of 3000 millennial and Gen Z consumers from the US, the UK, and Italy, conducted by the Consumer
Review Platform at Trustpilot. - Target dupes!
- Target dupes! - Your grandmother's
precious pearls, dupe. - Chicken cutlet, dupe. - Justin and Britney, dupe. - Doug Dimmadome, dupe. - All you have to do on TikTok is open your app and
type in the search bar, "Lululemon dupe" or whatever, and you'll get a bunch
of videos of creators sharing their resources. For example, if we're just
gonna stay on the same topic of leggings, TikTokers
swear by the brand CRZ Yoga, which sells a $27 pair on Amazon, as an exact dupe of Lululemon's
$100 Align leggings. CRZ Yoga sells over 80,000 pairs a month, according to data from the
E-commerce analytics firm, Jungle Scout, published on routers. I imagine there's even more incentive now to share your dupes
because of the platform's controversial new feature, TikTok Shop, which is essentially an
in-app shopping feature, which allows users to buy products directly from a creator's video, and that creator gets a
commission every time. I say it's controversial because I don't know any user who
actually likes TikTok Shop. Like I get so many unwarranted videos on my For You page that
are TikTok Shop videos, and they just come off
as like, MLM schemes, or it feels like I'm
watching the QVC channel. It's just, it's very weird
and uncanny, and I hate it. - [Nasal Voice] If you are
someone who literally can never (indistinct) you're gonna stop scrolling. This product is gonna go viral, and it's gonna sell fast. (indistinct) TikTok shop, this product's gonna change your life. - Anyway. What's the most surprising for me, having been a girl who
had Fuggs, or fake UGGs, in middle school, and was
very embarrassed by that, especially because they
were legitimate dupes, so they weren't trying to be UGGs. They were from Old Navy, looked nothing like real UGGs, definitely didn't have the UGGs label, definitely didn't even keep my feet warm, and meanwhile, all the girls
in my school had real UGGs, and were obsessed with like,
the Clique book series, which is about a group of
popular rich 12-year-olds who bully scholarship
students for having no money and not wearing designer clothes. Anyway, I'll unpack that all in therapy. I'm just shocked that
a lot of people today are so proud of their dupes. Ellen Briggs, a brand analyst
at the research company Morning Consult, said, "It's become a point of pride, almost, for young people to say, 'I found this dupe that's just as good as this more expensive product.'" On one hand, I can understand
trying to save money, I think we all can. Morning Consult's survey found that 49% of dupe shoppers reported
an annual household income of under $50,000, and 67% of those consumers
said saving money was a major factor when
considering buying a dupe. I think social media also allows for us to have vulnerable
conversations about the economy, and personal finances, hence why there was a whole
TikTok trend a bit ago called loud budgeting, which is the idea that
you should start being more transparent about not
being able to afford something when with family or friends. In this context, duping can feel like a smart economic way to buy something you want, and sharing dupes can be seen as a way to help out your community. Lorenzo Salamone has also written about the simplification of design, like the idea that almost every brand has their own version of a
Stan Smith or Converse shoe, and how buying knockoffs and fakes could be a reaction to brands' tactic of selling inexpensively
produced branded products. At the same time, a lot of popular creators
also can grow a following or get a commission if
they advertise their dupes on TikTok Shop or their Amazon storefront. This has also de-stigmatized
dupes from being just a working class,
middle class stereotype. The other argument to defend duping is that the consumers buying a dupe would never buy the original
product to begin with, and therefore the original
product is not losing sales. Sure, for larger corporations, it's easy for them to shrug off duping or even use it to their advantage. For example, Lululemon
threw a dupe swap event in LA last year, where they allowed people to swap a pair of their dupe leggings for a pair of real,
authentic Align leggings. The optimistic outcome would be that these initial young dupers would eventually put their
money towards Lululemon once they have the means to do so. It's about like, creating
brand loyalty in the long term. For small designers, it's a lot more difficult
to say it's no big deal. Kimberly Gordon, founder
of the brand Selkie, was interviewed by the Washington Post about her experience dealing with dupes. She talks about how she's
seen dupemakers on Amazon stealing her brand's photos to sell a low quality
version of her dress. Photography is so expensive. Like to pay for a
professional photographer and to pay for models and to
pay for the location rental, to pay for retouching services, to pay for like a makeup
artist, hairstylist, to pay for a clothing stylist, if you have a lot of different pieces, the costs that go into a
photo shoot are enormous, and these are all costs that
a small business takes on, on top of the actual
designing and manufacturing of the clothing. So it's just like it's, it's really just audacious. Gordon would then, after coming
across these Amazon dupes, send the links to her lawyer, but a new dupe would spring up somewhere, and influencers would promote it. As the journalist Maura Judkis writes, "Knocking off a massive
corporation like Lululemon might make a gal feel like the Robin Hood of seamless yoga tops, but it's different for smaller labels. Gordon, who only has
15 full-time employees, says every dupe took a chunk out of her potential livelihood." Gordon addresses the argument that dupe consumers would not
necessarily shell out for the original product,
but she also says, "If there wasn't a dupe, they would have no other choice. If they really wanted one,
they might save up and get one. It makes my brand look and feel cheaper to have cheap copies
of my brand out there." Matilda Djerf, founder of Djerf Avenue, and also an influencer, actually got in hot water last year for trying to take down videos of TikTokers promoting dupes of her brand. The situation was, a bunch of small creators
made videos mentioning dupes of her clothing line, specifically dupes of
these fruit print pajamas that she was selling. And then Matilda, or her team, probably her team, flagged a bunch of those videos
for copyright infringement, because I guess her company had copyrighted the fruit print design. But the common point against Matilda was that Djerf Avenue produces a lot of clothes that are
actually similar in design to clothes that Matilda already owned, that were made by other
brands, and in a way, one could say that Djerf
Avenue was selling dupes, which would make this whole copyright infringement
endeavor hypocritical. I personally don't agree with this take because Matilda wears a lot of basics, and whether or not you agree, the reality is that almost
every brand sells basics. It'd be silly to say
that producing your own basic trench coat is duping. Unless that trench coat
also happens to have the Burberry check on the interior, then that would be bad. But a straight up like, plain trench coat? I have to give it a pass. Other people claim that
Matilda is an influencer, so it's ironic that she would want people to stop copying her, when that's like the bread
and butter of her career. Either way, she got so much hate for it that she had to temporarily
delete her TikTok account. My personal feelings were that she and her team should
just let it rest because, unfortunately duping is almost guaranteed for any small business, and I think trying to
fight it through TikTok is only going to hurt your brand, because her team was
basically just fighting like, creators who are smaller than Matilda. Like, people only want a small business fighting big businesses. They don't want small
businesses punching down onto smaller creators. I do feel for her, because I
hate design theft on principle, and I mean, she's lucky enough
to have a successful career, but on principle, especially
for a non-influencer, design theft can really make or break a small designer's income. I have bought dupes in the past, but I'm at a point in my life right now where I won't buy a dupe, and if I can't afford the original, then I'm fine with just not
owning something like it in my closet. And much of that realization
is thankfully from earning more money, but also befriending designers, becoming more educated
on clothing quality, because I think another
reason why consumers are able to accept fast
fashion knockoffs so readily is because many consumers are unaware or don't care about clothing quality. So let's address the first point, right? A lot of consumers are
unaware of what they deserve. And no one's to blame for that. The majority of clothing consumers are not attending fashion shows where they can see the way
the clothes move on the body. Many of them are not
even shopping in person, where they can feel the
clothes in their hands. They're scrolling through
E-commerce websites, where the clothes are inevitably flat, and where many product descriptions don't even list the clothing's fabrics, the percentages of said fabrics, where those fabrics are sourced, and or by who they're being sewn by. And we're scanning photos of clothes that are being modeled by people with probably different
body proportions than us, and just hoping that
these clothes will fit when they show up at our door. It also just doesn't
help that, in general, clothes are just made
worse now than ever before, with even some luxury
brands cutting corners. The other point is, a lot of people just don't
care about clothing quality! A lot of the times, Amazon sellers will sell you a product that might look like
the original in photos, they might even use the original photos, but in real life the fabric might be a lot thinner or lower quality. The construction might be sloppy, and or the pattern might be
printed rather than embroidered. And many people know that, but they still justify buying it because they're only planning to
wear this item once or twice. Brian Walker, Chief Strategy Officer at
digital E-Commerce company, BloomReach, who's
previously worked at Amazon, says, "It's not about longevity, it's about finding an outfit for Coachella or to post on social media." I read this Substack essay, "Is this the year we stop dressing like clones of each other?" by Liza Belmont, and in it she writes, "If the enlightened critics leaving comments on my TikTok videos, 'That outfit is so ugly, LMFAO,' are to be believed, there is bad taste and
there is good taste. This is just simply not true. There's only personal taste. We tend to believe that
what everyone is wearing is the right thing to
wear, and as a result, we're deterred to take
risks with our style. Public figures who express
their personalities through their clothing are rare, and those who do are
shunned for having no taste, being weird, or even
doing it for attention." People who also don't conform to marketable mainstream styles have more difficulty
gaining a following too, because they can't use popular hashtags or tag big brands who might repost them. So I find like, the
biggest fashion influencers tend to have very
marketable, on-trend styles, which also feeds into this idea that we need to be participating in trends because the taste makers are all trendy. So the result is people
just go on this like, endless goose chase to test
out new trends that emerge, wanting more and more clothes, which means good quality takes a backseat, if we wanna be somewhat
fiscally responsible. There's also the idea that there are too many luxury brands
right now in the market, and you just can't support them all. You have to cut corners somewhere. I personally feel this way
about Substack newsletters and Patreons. Many writers have gone freelance now, and each of them charges
like five to $10 a month as a subscription model
for access to their essays. I'm not saying that they
should all be writing for free, but the result is that we
have to pick and choose who we want to financially support, because it's just not
possible to support everyone. - One thing led to another and, before I knew it, we were shopping. - Rachel Solomon wrote an essay earlier this month about dupes, but analyzed them through
the consumer perspective. She talks about her own experience wanting a Celine skirt from 2014, but the price was way over
her budget, like around $2600. She then found a similar skirt with the same design and cut from the brand Alice and Olivia, and purchased it for about $325. Alice and Olivia is not fast
fashion, hence the cost. Still, Solomon noticed a difference. She writes, "I didn't
feel great when I wore it. There was some corner
cutting about the fabric. It felt very synthetic, and
the way that the print was set. All it made me do was miss the original. That $325 was a complete waste of money. Years and years later, I found
the original Celine on YOOX, I think for 600 or $800. Still not cheap, but a lot less costly
than that wasted $325. I bought it and I still have it. I still wear it regularly. I still feel like my
best self when I'm in it. And if I do wanna sell
the skirt at any time, I always get offers. For a skirt that's now a decade old. That's why I could find
an image of it online. These Celine skirts are either
with their original owners, or are part of fashion circularity. But I tried a million different searches for the Alice and Olivia dupe, and of course found nothing. There is no market for it." She says though, that if she still couldn't
afford the original skirt at $600, she still would
never have bought the dupe. Instead, what she suggests is figuring out what we want from these original items. For her, she liked the whimsy
and feeling of lightness that the Celine skirt embodied. And so she suggests that, rather than looking
for an affordable dupe, look for an item of clothing
that has the same spirit, so to speak. The only cases I can think of that maybe justify buying dupes is if the original doesn't
carry your clothing size. But all in all, I think
at the end of the day, a corporation like Lululemon is not going to suffer too badly from some people buying
dupes of their leggings. But with a small business, I wanna promote saving up for, or at least respecting
their design ownership. And also, my experience is
that some small designers will work with me on custom sizing if I personally email them. I'm petite. So I usually request shorter hemlines, which I know is totally different from pattern grading
to, say a bigger size. But who knows? Maybe they'll be able to, especially if they do
all their own production, like in-house. The last thing I'll quote
from Solomon is this. "The idea of a dupe underlines our worst, 'have-to-have-it-now tendencies.' The blame for that goes to the
Zaras of the world, not you. We are conditioned that we so need to have this one exact thing
at this one exact time. And so we're excited to
discover a meh replacement, or worse, to learn that
someone has ripped off someone else's idea. When in other areas of our lives, we'd be completely appalled." Writer Jonah Weiner of the
newsletter Blackbird Spy Plane wrote about what he calls
"the CIRLOC mindset", which stands for Cop-IRL-Only challenge. And this mindset is
about shopping in person as much as possible, to avoid the doom scroll
of E-commerce shopping that can lead to over consumption. And to also avoid algorithms, trying to shape your own personal style. Obviously there are limitations, especially if you don't live in a place with a lot of cool shops. And of course there are also
plenty of small businesses that only operate online, because brick and mortar is expensive. And I'm also not going to knock the idea that sometimes you really just do need something immediately. But I think the idea of the
CIRLOC mindset is important. I've been one to
mindlessly scroll and shop while watching TV or while waiting in line at the grocery store, and
it can get really bad. You know, I could be
saving so much more money if I set limits on that
behavior, and in turn, could be saving for something
that I really wanted, that I ruled out initially
as not being able to afford. So that's all I have for today. Things to think about. I wanna emphasize that this
is like a judgment-free zone. I don't know anyone's personal
circumstances, but my own. And so, you know, these are just suggestions that if they align for where you are
in your life, that's great, but if not, hope you learn something fun, or had an amazing time listening
to my sick person voice. And I'll catch you next time. Okay, see ya!
