Can ‘Dupe’ Fragrance Brands Make The Real Thing?

Dupes are a big business.

Across TikTok and Reddit, beauty fans swap tips and recommendations for affordable alternatives to hard-to-get products, whether due to their price (think Maison Francis Kurkdjian Rouge Baccarat 540, $325) or the fact that they’re in short supply (any of Sol de Janiero’s $34 body mists).

While dupe mania touches all beauty categories, the craze has been particularly strong in fragrance. Viral premium perfumes often retail for triple digits, putting them out of reach for many shoppers. Because of that, lately, standalone dupe-specific brands are emerging to meet demand for lower-priced versions of favoured scents. Different from counterfeits, where companies attempt to pass off an imitation product as the real deal, brands that successfully create “smell-a-like” alternatives to popular luxury scents — whether overtly marketed as such or not — have broad appeal without the ick factor.

One such brand is New York-based Dossier, which launched in 2019 and sells over 90 dupes of best-selling scents like Le Labo Santal 33, YSL Black Opium and even Chanel No.5 for as little as $29. Its founder and chief executive, Sergio Tache and vice president, Ines Guien, say their brand helps to democratise the fragrance industry.

Now, it’s widening its focus to include more in-house perfumes, not modelled on any existing fragrances, which it calls its “originals” (the dupes are referred to as “impressions”).

“If you had asked me when we launched if we would create [original scents], I would have said ‘probably not’,” said Tache. But now, “we really want to put an emphasis on our in-house perfume that we develop from scratch with our very own ideas.”

Dossier isn’t alone. Alt Fragrances, another US based line, offers scents of its own creation, but is better known for the likes of “Executive” (inspired by Kering-owned Creed’s Aventus) and “Farouche” (inspired by Dior Sauvage, the world’s best-selling scent). Fast fashion retailer Zara also offers a number of scents that are ranked by comparison sites like Dupe Shop for their likeness to luxury perfumes, but also sells others that are considered more original.

Dossier added its first original scents in 2023, and now offers 13, with eight more launching before the end of this year. To generate hype, new originals will be launched on a specific day a few times a month, called “Dossier drop day”.

But few dupe brands have managed to make those who came for the lookalikes stay for the originals. E.l.f Beauty, originally known for affordable editions of trending cosmetics like its Halo Glow Liquid Filter (a play on Charlotte Tilbury’s Hollywood Flawless Filter, two and half times more expensive) has carved out an ownable space by continuing to offer low-cost products with viral appeal that straddle innovation and desirability. Others, like the U.K’s Makeup Revolution, which sells alternatives to premium lines like Huda Beauty for less than $10, are still largely thought of as dupe-only.

In fragrance, no brand has yet managed to make the transition. But Tache thinks there’s a critical mass of consumers who are fed up with paying too much for products in general.

“I knew that margins in beauty in general tend to be pretty high, but perfume really takes the cake,” he said.

Changing Landscapes

The addition of original scents comes as luxury brands are looking to increase their moats against competitors.

Historically, they were outwardly indifferent to dupe brands, asserting that they are essentially what fashion brands like Shein are to Chanel: a poor imitation that doesn’t dilute their true customer base. There is little legal recourse. Rachel Hearson, a trademark attorney at patent law firm HLK, said it’s all but impossible for brands to obtain trademarks for fragrances, as the smell is usually not distinctive enough to be associated with a singular firm, nor can it be clearly represented on a trademark register. (In 2009, L’Oréal proved a rare exception successfully preventing the sale of imitation perfumes made by a firm called Bellure via a complex web of European trademark laws. But that had more to do with the use of their brand name in marketing, rather than the scents themselves.)

Without legal precedent, other methods are emerging to deter copycats. Some seek patents for specific molecules. Japanese conglomerate Kao has a patented musk note, big fragrance firms like Givaudan have several. Symrise, a German ingredients company that manufactures fragrances for the likes of Carolina Herrera and DKNY, invested in technology that “blurs” the ingredients in its fragrances to prevent the scents being reverse-engineered through the use of gas chromatography, a common method for interpreting perfume notes. (Dossier uses it; Guien said it allows them to gauge around 60 percent of a perfume’s composition.)

Other brands are simply refusing to disclose the notes in their perfumes at all. Doing so can even be a marketing tactic. With Glossier’s You perfume, for example, the brand simply claims it enhances the smell of the wearer.

Building Desire

For original scents to become a lasting success, brands will need to convince perfume devotees of their high quality.

“Dupes are extremely popular right now, and that is our bread and butter … but we also want to show our own creativity,” said Dossier’s Tache.

The brand hosted a pop-up event in June in New York City to promote its original scents, and sold out of many of its best-sellers, with two hour wait times to get into the event. Guien adding that the dupe scents have created so much awareness for the brand, she saw “no reason” for customers to not be equally enthusiastic about its own scents.

Education will be another key pillar. In line with its ethos around democratising perfume, in October, Dossier will launch a scent called “Free The Musk,” intended to ignite a conversation around the use of patented ingredients.

“We want to show people a musk doesn’t have to be patented to be beautiful and sensual,” said Guien.

Adding unique scents is a natural step to help Dossier create a more enduring stance in the industry, and while Tache declined to delineate if the margins are greater on its impressions or originals, he was adamant that affordability would always be key.

“The North Star is to create perfumes that are affordable for the 99 percent,” he said, adding that the dupes were key to kick-starting that movement. “But we really want to be more than that, and having our own collection and being able to offer diversity to our customers is really important to us.”

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Editor’s Note: This story was updated on 16 July 2024 to clarify the launch timeline of Free The Musk.