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How dupes took over the world<br>The Verge’s Mia Sato explains the appeal and big business of dupes.

by Peter Balonon-Rosen and Sean Rameswaram<br>Jul 5, 2026, 11:00 AM UTC<br>Share<br>Gift

Fake designer purses for sale in Manhattan on July 6, 2024. Beata Zawrzel/NurPhoto via Getty Images

When Deckers, the company behind fleece-lined UGG boots, recently took Quince to court over its lookalike boots, it tried to bar Quince from referencing “dupe culture” at trial.

The bid failed, confirming that “dupes” and “dupe culture” — a commercial ecosystem built around providing consumers cheaper alternatives to name-brand products — are cultural phenomena here to stay.

The trial focused on whether Quince’s shearling boots that really, really look like UGGs violated the existing patent for the design. And in a twist, the jury ruled that yes, Quince had copied the UGG design — but the patent over the UGG boot should not have been issued in the first place because the design was too generic to protect. The ruling opened the door for Quince and any other brand to make a similar-looking boot, opening up a new frontier for “dupe culture.”

And the culture is, undoubtedly, thriving. While it used to be embarrassing to own a fake, that’s no longer the case. Today, if you can find a cheaper, knock-off alternative – that’s a life hack.

In our online age, social media and online shopping exist awash in copies, dupes, and knock-off versions of name-brand products. Rather than outright counterfeits, these products carefully step around trademark and copyright rules with the express purpose of offering consumers cheaper alternatives to something a different brand created. It’s become an entire industry, embraced by influencers and companies like Quince.

In her recent piece, “Knock It Off!,” Mia Sato, a senior reporter at The Verge, outlines just a few things that have been duped recently: makeup, Le Creuset Dutch ovens, hand sanitizer, designer perfumes, Apple AirPods Max, Oura Ring fitness trackers, viral phone cases, dishwasher pods, famous banana pudding recipes, Pilates workouts, and the entire island of Santorini.

“We could probably surmise that there will be even more dupes in the future,” Sato told Today, Explained co-host Sean Rameswaram, “but I think there are more dupes than have ever existed in the history of mankind right now.”

She joined Sean on Today, Explained to discuss the rise of “dupe culture” and changing ideas of ownership and originality in an era of internet-driven mass consumption.

Below is an excerpt of the conversation, edited for length and clarity. There’s more in the full podcast, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify.

What exactly is dupe culture? What has it become?

Dupe culture is this idea that the limitlessness of the internet allows you to find a cheaper alternative, a copy, something that is a reasonable stand-in for the thing that you actually want. And it has permeated every industry: guitars, clothing, makeup, food, recipes.

There are dupes for Lululemon pants. There are dupes for Birkin bags, which are incredibly expensive, incredibly hard to purchase designer handbags that go for tens of thousands of dollars. There was a $50 version for sale at Walmart. It was called the ‘Wirkin.’

There are dupes for fancy pots and pans. There are dupes for lip glosses and lip oils and lip stains. There are dupes for vacations — someone was marketing a different island as a dupe of Santorini, right? You can apply this dupe framing to just about anything.

What’s different now is that dupes are kind of just a way of life, in that you don’t have to go somewhere seedy or weird or black market-y to get a dupe. Anything you can think of, dupe culture means that there is a dupe out there somewhere. But it’s walking a line, being very careful not to infringe on things like trademarks or copyright.

And how do you find your dupes? Do you just go to dupe dot com?

Dupe dot com is a thing. Dupe.com, basically, you can copy a URL to any product, plug it into dupe.com, and it will do a reverse image search of the web and find products that look similar. Some of them might be cheaper, some of them might be expensive, but the whole idea is you’re looking for lookalikes.

A lot of modern online shopping actually has all the tools you need to find a dupe. Amazon, for example, just introduced a new feature where you can write out a text version of what you’re looking for, and it will use AI to generate an image of what it...