Q&A: When did ‘dupe culture’ take over? – Darden Report Online

(Illustration by Meredith Michael Smith, University Communications)

Q&A: When did ‘dupe culture’ take over?

01 August 2026

Faculty News / Marketing

in

By Alice Berry

Counterfeit is now cool, if you believe legions of American shoppers.

Dupes, or less-expensive alternatives to trendy or luxury products, are hardly new. Makeup enthusiasts were sharing more affordable options in the early 2000s, and long before the dawn of the internet, 18th-century French women asked their dressmakers to imitate Marie Antoinette’s elaborate outfits.

But now, shoppers don’t hide their knockoff purchases or try to pass them as authentic. A dupe is something to brag about; think Costco’s Kirkland label, or really any product that seems to offer similar value to a name brand at a lesser price.

Luca Cian, an expert on consumer psychology at Darden, says dupes are likely to be popular for the foreseeable future. (Contributed photo)

UVA Today spoke with University of Virginia Darden School of Business professor Luca Cian to understand what caused the change and how brands get away with copying one another.

Q. How do manufacturers avoid legal trouble for replicating another company’s product?

A. Premising that I am not a lawyer, the law protects brand names, logos and truly distinctive design elements. It gives much weaker protection to a general style or product idea, especially in fashion.

As long as a dupe avoids those protected elements and does not confuse shoppers about who made it, it usually survives a legal challenge. The UGG case, for example , shows how hard enforcement has become. Deckers sued Quince over lookalike boots, a judge ruled the UGG designs too generic for trade dress protection, and in June, a jury concluded that Quince had copied the patented design while also finding the patent itself invalid, so Quince walked away without paying damages. When even one of the most recognizable boots in the world is this hard to protect, you can imagine the odds for everyone else.

Q. Are the same manufacturers making both the original and the dupe?

A. Sometimes, yes. Most brands do not own their factories. They contract out production, and a factory that makes a premium item for one client can make something similar for another client, or sell an unbranded version through other channels.

That said, I would treat the “same factory” claim with healthy skepticism, because it has become a sales pitch of its own. Last year, a wave of viral videos from Chinese manufacturers claimed that famous luxury goods rolled off their assembly lines. Some of those claims were true, many were unverifiable, and some were pure marketing.

Q. It used to be at least mildly embarrassing to own a knockoff. What changed?

A. For a consumer psychologist like me, this is the most fascinating question of the group. Three things changed.

First, the meaning of the purchase flipped. Owning a knockoff used to signal “I cannot afford the real thing.” Finding a great dupe now signals “I am too smart to overpay.” Social media drove that flip. Videos tagged #dupe have collected billions of views on TikTok, and hunting for dupes became a skill people display publicly – almost a sport. Much of my own research looks at how people use consumption to express social identity, to tell others and themselves who they are. Being a savvy shopper has become an identity worth broadcasting.

Second, the shame in a knockoff came from the pretense. Research in consumer psychology showed that people want counterfeit luxury mainly when they use brands to impress others and fit in, and much less when they use brands to express who they really are. So if you think about it, a counterfeit is a performance, and every performance can be exposed. A dupe drops the act. Nobody is pretending. You can post your $28 lookalike leggings next to the $98 original and collect compliments for finding them.

Third, the numbers made it normal . Morning Consult found that roughly a third of American adults, and about half of Gen Z, have intentionally purchased a dupe. When half of your peer group does something openly and proudly, stigma cannot survive.

Q. How did dupes expand outside of fashion?

A. The logic of a dupe travels to any category where consumers suspect a large gap between the price and the cost of making the product. Social media rewards dupe content in every aisle, so creators went hunting for the next Dyson, the next Le Creuset, the next Stanley cup. Platforms like Temu, Shein and Amazon made it possible to manufacture and ship a lookalike within weeks of a product going viral.

Food is my favorite example, because it shows how old this behavior really is. Grocery stores have run this playbook for decades. We called them store brands or private labels, and Aldi built an empire on them. TikTok took a practice as old as the supermarket and gave it a much cooler name.

Q. Do you see this trend reversing...