Before I went to Turkey, which I wrote about here, I did some research on the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul and the high-quality dupes that are sold there. I didn’t know what to expect and, once there, kept an open mind as I walked around, but I immediately fell in love with a knockoff burgundy Celine Triomphe bag. That bag typically retails for around $4,000, but I got the knockoff for around $300 after some good negotiating. I’d seen many Celine dupes that day, but this one was so high-quality that I had to have it.
A few months later, I proudly showed it to a friend who had worked in luxury fashion sales for a few years, and he confirmed it was a good dupe, which only strengthened my excitement. While I adore my bag, I still yearn for authentic Celine items. It hasn’t quelled my desire for items from that brand; if anything, it’s cemented the purchase of an authentic Celine bag as one of my long-term goals.
As I began thinking about the rise of counterfeit culture, I wondered whether this phenomenon is more common than one might think. Do dupes make the authentic item more iconic and desirable? What I found was surprising.
Dupes and The Age of the Almost
Dupes, short for “duplicates,” are also known as fakes, replicas, bootlegs, and forgeries. They have been around as long as people have been making things – it actually prompted legislation in the 1800s that led to our modern-day ‘made in’ tags. In the early 2000s, it was considered a social faux pas to buy or wear counterfeit goods. Maybe it’s more accurate to say it was a faux pas if people found out they were counterfeited; now, however, people seem to have embraced the dupe culture.
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), in a 2025 report, shared that “in 2021, global trade in counterfeit goods was valued at approximately USD 467 billion, or 2.3% of total global imports.” That is up from $284 billion in 2013. Clearly, consumers have a growing desire for counterfeits, and, in my view, social media is responsible for that.
If you’re scrolling on your phone and see someone on social media, you may not be able to identify the small imperfections that would differentiate between a counterfeit and an authentic item. It’s not like you’d be able to take a close look at the stitching or see if her bag smells like real leather or vegan leather. Since we’re sharing so much of ourselves online and seeing so much of other people, we’re also feeling a lot more pressure to show off our status symbols to the world than ever before.
Lastly, it’s not just that we’re seeing more of each other; we’re seeing a greater number of people online than we’d ever come across naturally in our daily lives. Social media exposes us to hundreds of influencers who are all emulating one thing or another and trying to sell it to us. It inundates us with “things to buy” 24/7/365. Where, in the past, maybe we would’ve wanted to save up and buy one legit Celine bag, now we’re seeing people with Chanel, Bottega Veneta, Miu Miu, and Celine bags. Why buy a real one if people online can’t even tell the difference?
It’s not always about copying what other people wear. I bought an Aritzia pullover for around $100 during a Black Friday sale in November. I wanted another one, but I am not in a position to pay that price again. Plus – it’s polyester. So I bought a dupe from Amazon. In this way, I’m “copying” myself, not someone else. And I’d probably feel worse about it if it weren’t made of plastic.
I covered the legal grey area of dupes in my article about lululemon’s June 2025 lawsuit against Costco. You can read it here.
Why Do Dupes Work? It’s A Question of Psychology
Dupes Work Because They Address Scarcity
The reason dupes work is that the item they copy is so inaccessible, rare, and status-bearing. If an item were common and accessible, say, a Boston Red Sox baseball cap, people wouldn’t bother counterfeiting it. It’s the rarity that is so exquisitely desirable. If we take the Birkin as an example, Harper’s Bazaar Arabia estimates that there are only 200,000 Birkin bags in circulation, with 12,000 to 70,000 bags being made each year. Even though the bags are handmade from luxury materials, part of their allure is their exclusivity, and Hermes knows this.
The scarcity heuristic is a concept in social psychology that suggests that we perceive items as having a greater value when they’re in short supply. It helps us understand that, in marketing, messages that communicate a limited supply of an item are more effective than those that communicate a limited time. In a paper whose research supported this claim, the researchers hypothesized that this occurs because of consumer competition, in which people compete for limited resources. Hermes makes many bags; the Birkin, however, is famous and routinely duped because of its scarcity.
Before we move on, I should note that dupes aren’t universally embraced by all cultures. In a 2025 paper, the researchers analyzed 5,118 YouTube comments from both Koreans and Westerners. They found that English-speaking consumers concentrated less on ethical concerns about imitation goods and instead focused on brand discussions and design features. By contrast, Korean speakers’ comments addressed ethical risks, authenticity, and price consciousness regarding counterfeits. Thus, the concept of a “dupe” seems acceptable in Western culture, but Koreans are less open to it.
The Language Of How We Talk About Counterfeits
Another pivotal reason why the prevalence of dupes has soared is that the language we use to describe them has changed. In the past, we commonly used words like “counterfeit” and “fake.” These tend to have negative connotations, whereas the word “dupe” comes across as more fun or innocent.
Speaking to The Guardian in 2024, Jennifer Baker, the growth marketing leader at Grin, a creator management platform, shared, “Previous generations may have shopped for knockoffs on the sly, but Gen Z has not only normalised buying knockoffs or generic products but has grown the #dupe movement into one of the most searched terms on social media.”
These varying connotations aren’t just my interpretation. Check out these definitions from Merriam-Webster
- Dupe: “something that is made to look exactly like something else.”
- Counterfeit: “being such in appearance only and made or manufactured with the intention of committing fraud.”
Somehow, using the word “dupe” seems to soften what’s actually going on, which is that companies are copying another item for profit. Perhaps it’s because Gen-Z coined the word that it doesn’t seem so bad; after all, how could it when we’re talking about young people who want something nice to enjoy, right?
How Dupes Surprisingly Make the Authentic Item More Iconic
There’s no doubt that the popularity of dupes has grown and will only continue to do so. While there is some reason for big brands to worry about their designs being copied, many are embracing the dupe because it helps elevate their products to an iconic status.
As I was researching this article, I came across this excellent example of the power of replication by Felix Salmon of Business of Fashion. In his article, “In Defence of Fakes,” he points out that the Mona Lisa, which attracts millions of visitors per year at the Louvre Museum, gained its legendary status through replicas. It began with the media attention it received after its theft in 1911 (ironically, on my birthday, August 21), and then with replication during the post-war period. He writes, “Today’s social media images of the artwork have no inherent value, but in aggregate they’ve conferred billions of dollars in value on the original itself.”
A more modern example is that of Charlotte Tilbury’s Pillow Talk lipstick. More affordable brands like e.l.f., NYX, and Revlon copied that shade and sold it at a lower price, and the dupes went viral on TikTok in 2023. Data from NielsenIQ showed that, between July 2022 and July 2023, both affordable cosmetic brands (the duper) and higher-priced brands (the duped) experienced a surge in sales, measured by both dollar volume and the number of buyers.
The data suggests that both luxury and affordable brands can coexist. In fact, as a result of this surge in sales, Charlotte Tilbury expanded the Pillow Talk line in 2024, introducing a Pillow Talk lip plumper and three new shade extensions. According to Forbes, the brand sells one Pillow Talk product every 10 seconds worldwide.
Instead of satisfying a desire for the authentic item, purchasing a dupe can actually increase customers’ openness to buying the authentic item. A 2012 study backs this up; the authors report that this willingness to pay stems from three variables: an enjoyment of being envied, a joy in differentiating oneself, and a pleasure in experiencing the high quality of the original good. I guess I’m not alone in having a dupe and still pining for the real thing.
The Dupe and the Icon: A Strange Relationship
On the one hand, dupes take away sales opportunities from the brands they copy. On the other hand, anecdotes, news, and even scholarly research show that there may be a more complicated relationship here.
Kayla Morrison, who wrote an excellent article about dupe culture and the illusion of access for the Brown Political Review, writes, “What appears to democratize luxury instead intensifies its prestige. The Wirkin [a Walmart-branded Birkin dupe], instead, reminds consumers seeking inclusion and validation through these purchases of all that remains out of reach.”
Wearing or using our knockoff items serves as a reminder that it isn’t the real thing. For some, that may not be an issue, but for others, it only emphasizes the gap between what they desire and what they can afford. In that way, dupes define the original item. Copycats don’t endlessly replicate an item unless it already has cultural significance. The very existence of the dupe confirms the power of the original: it’s amplification masquerading as imitation.
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